Neon Genesis: Rebellion
by Mark Geoffrey Norrish
Summary: An AU of the anime's second season. An all-new Angelic host attacks Tokyo-3; the Marduk Institute sends a Fourth Child; a rogue Angel hunter arrives in Tokyo-3, pursued by Seele; one Angel refuses to die; and a council of elders plans to rule mankind, not as kings, but as Gods.
1. Raguel

"Increase theta-2 to 0.34," Ritsuko ordered. Maya gave a word of assent, and typed the command into her terminal.

The three pilots were in the freshly-restored Pribnow Box, running a gruelling sim of Misato's design, featuring concurrent attacks by a mixture of hostile Eva units and past Angels. At present, Asuka was dancing out of the grasp of the fourth Angel's energy whips, while Shinji and Rei were trading blows with a green production Eva formally called Unit Minus One but which was universally nicknamed the Evabot. Ritsuko, who was in charge of the enemy AI, was cheating outrageously, with Misato's blessing. The Angel had been redesigned to have an extra two whips, longer than the originals had been; meanwhile, the evil Eva was operating with an effective synchronisation rate of almost 200%, didn't need a power cable, and had extra armour plates with no weight penalty. The simulated battle was inside Tokyo-3, so the bridge crew were operating the dynamic battlefield to the pilots' advantage, but Ritsuko also had the power to disable individual subsystems, and the various armour plates and weapon relays failed one after another. On paper, this was to determine which systems were most critical, and to train the pilots to be able to keep fighting when they failed; in practice, Ritsuko was enjoying herself more than she had in weeks.

This was the sixth such exercise; they had been defeated in two of the previous five. Asuka had thrown a tantrum when they lost the first match, in which they had been pitted against an enemy Eva and the sixth, except the fishlike Angel was allowed to fly; Misato vetoed that scenario after it single-handedly crushed all three defenders before the Evabot even reached the city. They had lost the third match, too, when the tenth had flattened them all just after Asuka took out the fifth; Asuka demanded they stop using the orbital Angel until Misato could 'come up with a way to kill it that isn't stone-cold retarded'.

The sim had therefore grown more balanced each time, and was by now reasonably even. Asuka, who refused to do worse than Shinji had in real life, had the sense to stay out of range of the Angel's whips until an opening presented itself; with Ritsuko sabotaging the city around them, this was taking longer than she'd expected. Meanwhile, Shinji grappled with the green Eva, rolling over apartment blocks and museums, while Rei trained a pallet gun on them both. The Evabot was stronger, but whenever it got the upper hand, Rei would spray it with bullets.

"Battery D! Hit it!" Asuka shouted.

"That one began knocked out," Ritsuko observed. She idly rerouted a side-arm rising for Asuka to instead come up on the opposite end of the city, kilometres away from anyone. "The third threw Unit-00 into it during the last battle, I think." They allowed only partial repairs between simulations.

"Asuka, the weapons lift's failed," Shigeru reported. "I'm trying again, but these will take a minute." He typed commands, and four more guns began rising through separate weapons shafts. Ritsuko gave it a moment's thought and decided to make one of the lifts 'randomly' explode just before the guns reached the surface.

Asuka hissed as a whip grazed her abdominal armour plate, and skipped backward, out of range of the follow-through. She jabbed with her glaive, forcing the Angel to waft backward.

There was a buzz at Ritsuko's hip. She glanced down at her phone; it was an automated message from the Magi. She checked it.

_Code A+_

She blanched.

"Maya, handle this," she ordered, and swept from the room.

"Senpai?" Maya asked, panicked. It took two people to run their role effectively: one to predict what the heroes were going to do and how to complicate it, and one to enter the actual commands.

"Okay, _screw_ this," said Asuka, as her opponent sliced through a skyscraper she'd spent the past twenty seconds manoeuvring it behind. "Wondergirl, tag in here."

Maya dithered for a moment, before sending a jam signal to Asuka's umbilical cable, making it catch on a power line that hadn't been there a moment before. Rei turned and opened up on the Angel, making it flinch. Asuka simply jettisoned her cable and sprinted toward Shinji. The Evabot got the upper hand and pulled its prog knife on him; Asuka twirled her glaive and sliced through its wrist, then its neck.

"Come on, Third!" she cried, turning back to the Angel, which was advancing through Rei's barrage. Unconsciously, her mouth had turned up into the toothy grin she always wore while fighting and winning. "Hurry up! Go right!"

Maya simply couldn't match their speed. Asuka vaulted over an armoured shelf and around two energy whips; between that and Rei throwing her empty gun and two nearby cars, the Angel and Maya were too distracted to notice Shinji until he grabbed it from behind and stabbed at it with his prog knife. Asuka seized the opportunity to deliver a vicious double strike with her glaive; Shinji barely yanked his hand out of the way.

"Ha," she said, as the Angel fell silent and the simulation ended. "What happened at the end? Couldn't keep up, or just felt like fighting fair for a … hey, where's Akagi gone?"

The scientist was in fact in an elevator, heading a long way down. When she reached her destination, she had to type a 22-character passcode including six Unicode characters, and give thumb and retinal scans.

Through the armoured door was an extensive laboratory. Inside a locked cabinet, visible from multiple hidden cameras, lay a small block of hardened transparent Bakelite. Inside it was Adam.

There was a hairline crack in the plastic.

She flipped open her phone. "Commander? We have a situation."

…

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Rebellion

…

Rei methodically rinsed the LCL from her hair and body, watching with mathematical interest the rivulets it formed on her skin and eddies around her feet before draining to Nerv's treatment and sewage systems. Every time she showered, she followed the same sequence of actions, stood in the same position, set the water pressure to the same level, and yet each time the water traced subtly different routes along her body to the drain.

It occurred to her that the plumbing was less predictable than her. She wasn't sure what to think about this.

The Second Child finished her shower after Rei. She was obviously exhausted from the sims, judging by how little she was complaining. She barely spared Rei a glance before they left the showers, and said nothing when they and Shinji met Misato in the debriefing room.

"That was pretty good for a first time," Misato began.

"'Pretty good'?" Asuka repeated, indignant. "We beat two Angels attacking at once almost every time, even while that cow literally defied the laws of physics around us."

"With three fully functional Evas, when you already knew the Angels' strengths and weaknesses _and_ workable counterplans," Misato continued without missing a beat. Asuka opened her mouth to say something cutting about the 'workable' part; Misato cut her off. "You know perfectly well that most of the setbacks we've faced in the field have been caused by Angels displaying unexpected new abilities, and that you've only fought two out of eight with all three Evas. You also got at least one Eva trashed in most of those sims. So yes, pretty good for a first time.

"Individually, you're performing as well as could be expected, given how much training you've each done." Asuka stood a little straighter; Shinji shrugged a little; Rei was still. "But you're not working together to the best of your ability. You split up and consistently got in one another's way when you tried to fight the one target. There was only one part where you really meshed, when Asuka and Shinji fought the seventh like you did the first time, but as soon as that was destroyed you began interfering with one another again."

Asuka glared at Shinji, because he had in fact accidentally shot her in the back immediately after it went down, when she darted out from behind a skyscraper at the third Angel; it was an unlucky hit directly where the entry plug would be, and she was instantly 'killed' and left to scream imprecations from her darkened plug for the rest of the battle.

"You're not going to make all three of us learn a dance routine now, are you?" he asked, with nervous glances at Asuka and then Rei.

Misato shook her head. "No. We used that specific tactic because that Angel regenerated unless identical damage was dealt to both cores in unison. It's too inflexible otherwise."

"Well, then, how am I supposed to work with these idiots shooting at me?" Asuka asked.

Misato smiled and shrugged. "No idea. Today was a test run; the crew and I will spend the next few days working out exercises to help. We'll start on them next week. You're dismissed for the day."

"Are you driving us back home?" Shinji asked.

Misato shook her head again. "The Commander's just flown off to America for another budget meeting; I have a triple shift. With no notice," she added, irritated. "You'll have to look after yourselves tonight."

"However will we manage," Asuka undertoned, as they turned and left.

Subjectively, they had fought eight Angels (not the eleventh, which the Commander had ordered kept secret from everyone up to and including the pilots, and which had been entirely erased from Magi's memory banks), most of them repeatedly, and six enemy Eva units over the past hour; each of them had been disabled at least three times. They were exhausted. Rei didn't even notice that she'd missed her street until they were a block past it.

"Ayanami …" Shinji began. Rei stopped and turned back to him.

"What is it?"

"Well …" he replied.

There was a longish pause. Asuka, who was in the lead as usual, turned around, rolled her eyes with impatience, and began tapping her foot, but said nothing. Rei turned back to her street.

"When Misato wanted me and Asuka to synchronise to fight the seventh Angel, she had us live together," Shinji blurted out. "And, um. It wasn't. All that. Bad. Mostly. Do you want to spend tonight with us? At our place?"

"Where's she going to sleep?" Asuka asked before Rei could say anything.

"Misato's room," he said. "I could clean it up a bit first."

"Did she say you could do that?" she pressed.

"I could call her now," he said, fumbling for his phone. "Or I could sleep on the floor. I'll cook dinner for all three of us, and we can watch movies or something. I – I mean, if we're pilots, we should spend more time together, right? It was nice when we went out for ramen last month. And it's no trouble for me, none at all!"

Rei was silent for a time. "I should go," she said at last, and set off back for her own apartment.

"Oh," Shinji said, dejected. He turned back to Asuka; her hair whipped around as she turned and began walking again.

"Come on, Third!"

Their work for Nerv detracted from the pilots' schoolwork in two major ways. The more obvious one was when they missed classes while convalescing after battles; this included Asuka's unilateral declaration of one day off after every battle. The second was that, even when no Angels had attacked for four weeks, the endless synch tests and training sessions left them physically and emotionally drained at the end of the day. They simply had no energy left to do their homework properly. Most days, Shinji would just curl up with his SDAT, and Asuka would switch off in front of the TV, safe in the rationalisation that their homework was largely pointless busywork anyway, and that Nerv forbade the teacher from assigning detentions that could interfere with training.

"Hey, Shinji," she said, settling down before the TV. "Get me something to eat. I'm starving."

He glanced at her, then at a pack of chips sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter.

"Not junk food." She raised an arm, possibly trying to show off how slim she was, but actually drawing her sleeve up in a way that gave Shinji an eyeful of side boob. He turned pink but didn't look away, glad that she couldn't see him from this angle. "Proper food. I don't want to get fat like Akagi. Besides, I don't like the taste of that kind."

"O-okay," he said. He could've sworn Asuka had specifically asked for that brand of chips, and he definitely wouldn't call Akagi fat. Still, if she asked him to make her something, he'd do it.

It took him only a few minutes to fix her a platter of sushi, but it was long enough for her to curl up asleep on the seat. He set the plate down and studied her for a moment, weighing up the potential beatings from disturbing her when she was sleeping against the potential beatings of not telling her when her food was ready.

He knew she sometimes sleepwalked while dreaming, but now, when she'd just drifted off, before her dreams started, she was perfectly still. Her face, so often contorted into smirks, glares, and pouts, smoothed out, the tics that she tried to hide under her temper gone. Her hair flopped over her body like cat's fur, and he had a mad urge to stroke it, although his sense of self-preservation stopped him. Instead, he tried to work out which part of her he could touch without her accusing him of being a pervert, and settled on shaking her foot.

"Hmm?" she mewed, and cleared her throat.

"I made you sushi," Shinji said, offering her a piece.

She ate it without comment and seemed to revive a little, although not to her full liveliness. "Why were you touching my foot, you pervert?"

_A swing and a miss_. At least she didn't hit him this time. "You were asleep."

She took another mouthful and a moment to think. "That doesn't – you know what, never mind. I wasn't sleeping. I was just resting my eyes. It's not like there's anything good on TV anyway." She made no move to mute it, though.

"It's a shame Ayanami couldn't come," he mused.

"Why do you see in her, anyway?" Asuka asked. "She's probably the most boring person I know."

"Didn't you ask her to eat with us, you know, after we fought the tenth Angel?" asked Shinji.

She shrugged.

"I guess I just like seeing her smile," he said.

Asuka frowned. "But that's just that you're a sap," she said. "You couldn't stand being around anyone more depressed than yourself."

"I'm not depressed," he said.

She chose to let that one pass. "I mean, you hang out with those two idiots instead of her when you have the choice."

For some reason, his life seemed to place him in trios a lot. He was one of three pilots, and one of three housemates, not counting Pen-Pen. Right now, though, Asuka presumably was referring to Toji and Kensuke. Shinji could think of no response to this beyond a shrug.

Asuka smirked in triumph. "Let's watch a movie," she decided, and popped another piece of sushi into her mouth. "You pick."

He blinked. She never let him pick. _No-one_ ever let him pick. He had no idea how to go about doing something like that; what if she didn't like it? "I'm fine with anything."

She harrumphed and rolled her eyes. "I'm too tired to decide now," she said. "Just choose something we haven't seen which isn't too bad."

"If we haven't seen it, how do I know whether it's good?"

She just glared at him, so he scurried over to the TV and checked its program log. It was a semi-modern model which recorded broadcasts for up to a week; in exchange, there was a hardware lock to keep people from skipping over the ads. Given the population decline and cultural disruptions following Second Impact, very little in the way of cinema had been produced in his lifetime, most of it propaganda and very dull; the only real candidates were badly dubbed pre-Impact American movies. He chose one called Labyrinth because it had a colourful thumbnail, and they settled in.

…

Six holographic lights turned on in the Commander's private jet. Five of them illuminated five of the world's most powerful men; one of them illuminated two.

"Ikari," said the man with the green background. "I hear you've been training your pilots to fight other Eva units. What is the meaning of this?"

Ikari remained stock-still. When dealing with people like those on the Human Instrumentality Committee, one could never show any nervous tics. Likewise, Fuyutsuki never moved. He did note, though, that the Committee had found out about Misato's new program remarkably quickly. "After the third Angel, we attempted to optimise our tactics against similar targets. Consequently, we used inappropriate strategies and suffered extreme damage – and repair bills – in the following battles, and so discontinued the practice. Now, though, we've faced enough variety of Angels to attempt it again, but we run the risk of similar catastrophe unless we use all known Angelic forms."

"Between the first, second, third, and seventh Angels, I should have thought your pilots would have ample opportunities to train against humanoid enemies," observed the man with the yellow background. "Are you sure you're not preparing to fight a different opponent altogether?"

"The first and second Angels are not appropriate for use in a training program," Ikari replied. "It was over-training against the third that led to critical injuries and near defeat by the fourth and fifth, and the seventh was … idiosyncratic. I am preparing Nerv for the remaining Angels as best I can, in accordance with your wishes."

"What guarantee of that do we have?" asked Yellow.

"Adam."

"What about him?" Red asked suspiciously. "He is dormant, harmless."

"You shouldn't even have him," Green said unpleasantly. "He should still be in our possession. You know perfectly well that this is unacceptable to the Committee."

"The Chairman himself gave the order for Adam to be shipped here," Ikari said.

This was technically true. Ikari had raised the option in a full Seele meeting, pointing out to the rest of the organisation that it would be catastrophic if an Angel reached either Adam or Lilith, and that it would therefore be logical to concentrate all vulnerabilities and forces in one location. As moving Lilith would be rather less practical, it followed that Adam and the third complete Eva should both be transported to Tokyo-3 and placed under Nerv's command. This was such common sense that the Committee couldn't think of a reason to refuse on the spot without revealing their own plans to the rest of Seele, and Kihl had had to pretend it was his idea. Everyone present knew that Kihl had ordered the power sabotage in retaliation and was planning to steal Adam back at a later date, and almost certainly to murder Ikari; the only real question was which man had pre-empted more of the other's counterplans. Naturally, the other four Seele men present each had contingency plans for either outcome, and would deny this if asked.

"And now, Adam is escaping his Bakelite prison," Ikari continued, before the Committee could descend into childish bickering over who manipulated whom into allowing what to be stolen when. "The Scenario cannot proceed as planned if he is allowed to regenerate. Nerv therefore requires the data on his former containment protocols."

"So, return him to Germany, and Seele will protect him, as we did for the past fifteen years," said Red.

"Is it really necessary to leave Nerv unattended to discuss this?" asked Blue.

"It is required to sell certain illusions to my inferiors, yes," Ikari said, a smirk threatening to break out behind his gloved hands. He quashed it. "And what shall the Committee tell the rest of Seele when they ask why we have divided our forces needlessly?"

"Why not tell them the truth?" Yellow suggested ironically. "That we do not trust you?"

"If you believe there is a better man for the job, then I propose you have me removed and make him Commander of Nerv in my place," Ikari said. This came across as almost flippant, because of how infeasible it was. "After all, it hardly matters to Seele's scenario whether an Angel reaches one Seed or both."

The way these negotiations worked, the Committee was ultimately going to give him something – they certainly couldn't allow Adam to go unchecked – but it would have strings attached and probably only be a temporary solution. They would never trust him if they didn't have apocalyptic leverage; and the alarming thing was that if their Scenario didn't go as planned, they probably would initiate Third Impact, just to spite him. This was all accounted for, though. Lurking just beyond the circle of light used for Ikari's receiver was a charming man with stubble.

…

"If we use a Kolmogorov-Poisson prior, we can define a probability distribution over hypothesis space," Ritsuko explained, scribbling some equations on a board while Maya watched, her eyes slowly widening as she realised how far over her head it was. "We then sample from that, allowing Magi to invent new Angels for the simulations. We'd be able to train the pilots to deal with unpredictable enemies, rather than just rehashing old battles over and over."

"Could … we use that to predict future Angels?" Maya asked, playing for time while she tried to parse out the maths.

"Unlikely," Ritsuko said, turning back to the board to check for errors or inspiration. "Hypothesis space is too broad; I estimate there are at least millions of relatively plausible forms, and that's assuming that …"

She trailed off, hearing a rhythmic crashing sound. She frowned and looked out into the corridor, her protégée trailing behind her.

Misato was kicking a vending machine; it was already rather heavily dented. "The entire city is run by not one but three genius supercomputers that can coordinate two million workers," she wailed, "thirty thousand soldiers, and three giant robots that shoot forcefields and swim through lava, but they can't even run a friggin' vending machine?"

Ritsuko watched impassively, giving a solid impersonation of Rei. Maya ducked back into the office.

"Gods! I kill _gods!_ It's my _job!_ It's what I _do!_ We've destroyed monsters that entire civilisations couldn't even scratch! Not just once, but again and again! And yet we can't … even …"

Maya appeared again, mutely offering a can of coffee. Misato took one look at it and began sobbing.

Ritsuko strode forward and plucked it out of Maya's hands. "Misato, how long have you been on shift now?" she asked.

Misato sniffled. "I don't … since this morning?"

Ritsuko checked her phone's clock. "That would be since _yesterday_ morning," she corrected. "I seem to recall you've been doing double shifts for most of this week, with no days off. That would put you at, oh, about a hundred hours here over the last week?"

"With the reinforcements to the UN deployments, I've had to supervise everything," Misato said. "And … and they're all so _stupid_ … there was this one man, who wanted to put thirty-five tanks in the main plazas … and …"

"Misato, get some rest," said Ritsuko. "You need sleep. You can't work effectively if you're dead on your feet, and just running on caffeine is going to kill you."

Her phone buzzed. Another message from Magi: _Blue pattern detected._

She placed the coffee back in Misato's hands.

…

"Hey! Shinji! Wake up!"

Shinji blinked in disorientation for a moment, before a hand grabbed his shoulder and rattled him awake. "Ow! I'm awake! Let go! Asuka!"

"Well? Get up!"

He squinted as she switched on his light. "What time is it?" It was pitch black outside.

"Never mind that now. They've found another Angel."

And with that, he was fully awake. "What? Here? Why haven't the sirens gone off?"

"They want to keep the roads clear so we can deploy faster. Come _on!_"

She pulled him to his feet and toward the door.

"Wait, let me get dressed –"

"You'll be wearing a plugsuit, idiot," she said, slipping on her sandals.

"But you're –"

She was dressed in a rather nice dark grey skirt and a white button-up shirt with a neckerchief, and her hair was combed and tied in a ponytail. He was in his nightclothes.

"That's because I actually had my phone with me, because pilots are supposed to be on standby! What's your excuse? And put your shoes on!"

He didn't have a power socket in his room, because she had kicked him out when she arrived and forced him into a smaller one; he therefore left his phone in the living room to charge at night. Also, he slept with his SDAT headphones in his ears, which tended to mute external sounds. Before he could explain all this, she grabbed him again and pulled him out the door.

A pair of Section Two goons with a black van were waiting for them at the base of the apartment complex; with minimal chatter, they drove the pilots to a monorail station. Moments later, their tram was descending into the Geofront, bypassing all checkpoints and heading directly to the cages; and the Angel sirens went off.

Shinji looked despondently at his feet. One of his shoes had fallen off when Asuka dragged him out of their apartment; he couldn't decide whether to keep wearing this one and be off-balance or to take it off and be completely barefoot but risk losing it. Asuka rolled her eyes at this, her phone to her ear.

"Attacking at two in the morning is just rude," she fumed.

"You don't need to tell me," Misato replied from Central Dogma. Around her, Ritsuko and Maya were querying Magi, commanding a team of junior techs. "We have about five hours before it reaches Tokyo-3, but we'll minimise collateral damage if we engage it further away."

"Wasn't that what you said about the seventh?" Asuka asked.

"Would you have preferred the UN dropped that N2 mine on top of the city?" Misato asked. "Try not to lose this time."

"Hey! The way _I_ remember it, we beat that thing!" But Misato had already hung up. "You –" She rounded on Shinji. "Take that thing off, you look like an idiot!"

Minutes later, the three pilots were properly dressed and inserted into their Evas. Misato opened a broadcast to them all. "The target has just made landfall," she said. "Here's a live video feed."

It was actually six screens from multiple angles, a few kilometres east of the crater the N2 mine had left after their first battle with the seventh. The beach was turned to day by high-power plasma lamps from hovering VTOLs; they could make out flight lights of UN ground-attack aircraft circling above, awaiting their orders. A single gargantuan hand ending with disproportionately long claws was sunk deep into the sand; an emaciated forearm, elbow, and half an upper arm trailed into the water. Its skin was mostly white, with asymmetric patches and whorls of grey and brown. Great clouds of steam billowed up around it. As they watched, a second hand broke out of the ocean and settled on the shore, and then its head appeared. The best description Shinji could think of was that it was shaped like a cat's head, except without ears, whiskers, or any other fur, and there was a wide black smear where its eyes would have been, like it was covered in soot. As though to show it off, the steam swirled and flowed away from it.

"Ugly sucker," Asuka observed. Shinji rather agreed with her.

"Brace," Misato said, and launched their catapults. "You'll arrive at the airport and be flown over. We're going to airdrop you as soon as possible. Rei, you're designated exclusively for neutralising its AT Field. Shinji, you'll have a pallet gun. Asuka, your sonic glaive. When Rei gives the signal, Shinji will open up on it. While it's distracted and taking damage, Asuka will charge and finish it off."

"Try not to shoot me this time, idiot," Asuka added quietly.

On their screens, a third hand pulled out of the water, and a fourth, each throwing out more steam. The Angel's upper shoulders were positioned higher than its head; the one on its right was further forward. A bright red crystal sat where its Adam's apple would have been. Its torso was covered in criss-crossing ridges, through which seawater sluiced back out to sea. It pulled itself forward, revealing three more arms, narrow, flat hips, and then finally its knees. It was crawling; with so many long, thin limbs, it evoked a spider dragging a large piece of prey. Each arm was as long as an Eva, although they were bent so the shoulders were at maybe two thirds that height.

"That's … a lot of arms," Shinji observed nervously. "Three on the left, four on the right."

"But look how slow it is," Asuka said, excited. "It's a sitting target."

Their Evas arrived at the surface. Air force crews were waiting for them; they strapped themselves into cargo bays, removed their power cables, and disabled main Eva functionality. Moments later, they were in the air.

"Does the Angel possess any ranged attacks?" Rei asked.

"Bad memories, eh, First?" Asuka baited.

Rei's eyes flicked to the Second Child's hologram, then back to Misato's. Her expression and tone remained constant. Responding to Asuka was beneath her. Asuka scowled.

"Most of the setbacks we've faced in the field so far have been caused by Angels displaying new abilities," Rei pressed.

Misato blinked. That was an almost exact quote of her own words, mere hours earlier. Rei had actually pointed out a tactical oversight. She had a sudden mental image of this Angel displaying a particle beam like the fifth's and destroying all three Evas while they were still in the air. She _really_ needed sleep. "I'll order the UN forces to attempt a preliminary bombardment, to coax out its AT Field and any attacks it might have," she promised. "Someone, get me Maj-Gen Reichner, now!"

The Angel's legs ended in what might have been a very poor sculptor's attempt to make human feet. They dragged along the ground, digging twin furrows bordered by piles of wet sand. As they watched, one of its forward hands landed on an old house; without warning or visible source, the house burst into flames.

"The target's surface temperature is approximately three hundred degrees," reported Maya, reading from a thermal camera. "There's a constant high-energy reaction, dissipating in the form of heat."

"Right," Asuka said, her enthusiasm fading very slightly. "Note to self: don't let it touch me."

Although really, in all honesty, the fact that it could fight back just made it more exciting. After all, executing some toddler of an Angel that couldn't even stand up straight would be beneath her.

"Major?" said Makoto. "Reichner's refusing to engage."

Misato growled. This was like that time on the _Over the Rainbow_, except worse. Her rank was only a field officer; there was a special UN directive that, in case of Angelic attack, gave her authority over almost everyone on Earth except Ikari Gendo, but general officers never listened to that. She snatched the phone from Makoto. "Major-General, Nerv ranks _everyone_ when an Angel's attacking."

"I don't care if you're the Pope," Reichner replied. He had a strong German accent. "I don't care if you're God Almighty. Between the first one and that flying diamond, my men got slaughtered for no reason at all. You think those robots are the only things that can hurt them? You can damn well use them then."

"They are. And that means we're all going to die if they get taken out by a surprise attack."

"What, so my men are expendable to you?"

"Aren't you a soldier?"

"There's a difference between launching an attack where you know some of your men will die but you will take an enemy position, and launching one where they'll die without even scratching its paint job."

"You will make a difference. Sneak attacks are the Angels' deadliest weapons. If you can flush them out, it could save an Eva. We only have three of them."

"You guarantee it's necessary?"

"I'm a soldier too, Lieutenant-General. I don't sacrifice troops when I don't have to."

He hung up.

"The order's gone through," Misato said. "Let's see how it likes high explosives."

The camera plane manoeuvred to in front of the Angel, keeping a safe distance, and swivelled left. Eight UN light bombers were angling into position; they dived, each releasing a payload at the nadir of their descent before turning sharply upward. The eight pairs of bombs slammed into walls of shimmering orange light and exploded. A moment later, the Angel's head turned to track them; its eye sockets flashed eight times, and the aircraft burst into flames one by one.

"Call off the attack!" Misato ordered into her phone. "It can see you; and don't provoke it into taking out the spy planes or the dropships. Ritz, have Magi compute its trajectory and transmit to all units. Battery 65, prepare to fire!"

"Guess that's a yes," Asuka said to Rei, now sounding almost nervous. "Tougher than it looks." More fires were flaring up in its path; its legs were blackening with soot.

"Should we change the plan?" Shinji asked. "Rei's going to be too much of a target without even a weapon."

"No," said Rei.

"Hmm?"

"I won't be a target," she clarified. "If its AT Field is suppressed, it will prioritise immediate threats over allowing its field to recover." She paused. "We may swap places, if you like."

On the screen, a barrage of explosions rippled across the Angel and surrounding countryside. A moment later, the camera tracked over to a large fire, wreathed in smoke and ammo explosions. The words 'Battery 65: destroyed' flashed, before the camera tracked back.

"I," said Shinji, considering it. Rei might have been wrong; and he had a higher synch ratio and stronger AT Field, so he'd endure its counterattack better; but he'd also be better able to cancel its AT Field and let Asuka finish it.

"Stick to your positions," Asuka interrupted. "Third, you're a better shot. Just make sure you open up as soon as she moves, and don't give it an opportunity to focus on her. We'll see how well it can aim when an Eva's machine-gunning it in the face. Continuous fire, not burst, until I'm close enough. You don't need to be accurate anyway. Just so long as you don't get me instead."

"Fifteen seconds to drop," Misato reported. The pilots reactivated their Units, and their five-minute timers resumed counting down.

From the air, they could see fires spreading in the Angel's wake. Firefighting teams were slowly converging.

"We'll probably have to help put those out after," Asuka mused. "How boring."

The Angel apparently wasn't interested in blasting down the planes buzzing overhead, now that the bombing had stopped; there were still half a dozen spotlights and cameras following it. It didn't notice as the Evas crashed to earth and inserted their power cables, either.

"Ready," Rei whispered, staying very still.

Shinji landed a few hundred metres left of her. He moved backward to crouch behind a copse of trees, and levelled his gun. "Ready."

Sneaking was difficult at best in a bright red machine sixty metres high that weighed around five thousand tons, but Asuka still gave it a try. She kept low and moved to the outer edges of the glow from the fires trailing the Angel, toward its left, where it had fewer arms. "Ready."

The Angel still hadn't responded to any of them. From this close, they could hear it breathing, a horrible wheezing noise like a dying asthmatic, as loud as a jet engine.

"On three," Misato ordered. "Two … one … go!"

In unison, Rei raised her hands and AT Field, and Shinji pulled the trigger. His hands jerked with the recoil; a moment later, there was a flash, and a lance of energy spattered against his armour, pitting and burning through it. He cried out and dived to the side, dropping his gun.

"Ikari!" Rei cried, half-turning toward him.

"Hey!" Asuka snapped, as the Angel's AT Field began filling in. She twirled her glaive, slicing it back open; it took a swipe at her with two hands, much faster than she'd expected, raking her armour. She swore in German and brought her blade down in a brutal chop, severing one hand. Its eye sockets flashed again, and a plane of energy shot cleanly through her own wrist. "Aah!"

"Oh, you clever _thing_," Ritsuko murmured.

Asuka staggered back, then ran around to the Angel's side and threw her glaive into its thigh. Its head tracked her, flashed, and blasted a hole through her own leg.

"Asuka!" Misato cried. "Retreat! Everyone, fall back!"

…

The three pilots, Misato, Ritsuko, and the three senior techs sat around a conference room. Asuka's and Shinji's plugsuits were extra-pressurised, around her wrist and thigh and his chest, mimicking bandages for psychosomatic purposes. Asuka walked with a limp and could only use her left hand; Shinji was reduced to shallow breaths. Ritsuko assured them that it should wear off within a few hours, as their nervous systems rebooted and remembered the difference between their real bodies and the Evas.

"The target appears to have a super-elastic AT Field," Ritsuko explained. "Whenever anything attempts to damage it, that energy is duplicated and stored in its field, and then automatically released at whatever attacked it. It's apparently intelligent enough to know what launched an attack from a distance, as with the bombers and artillery. I'm therefore reluctant to allow an N2 strike on it.

"On top of this, it has nine limbs, and it can regenerate them quickly." She opened the recorded footage so for from one camera on her laptop, which was plugged into a projector, and jumped around to show the severed stump lengthening, then fissioning into two then three then five digits and sharpening to points. "It would be difficult for an Eva to attack its core without first disabling most of the arms; but we can't effectively do that without disabling your Evas at the same time."

"Is there any way to make it miss with its retaliatory attacks?" Misato asked. "Hit it with conventional weapons at the same time, hope it targets the wrong source?"

"That would be optimistic," Ritsuko said. "It doesn't have eyes, and it seems to understand indirect fire."

"Could we have one Eva ambush it from below? Dig out a hollow, cover it with sand …?"

"Bad idea," said Asuka. "It's too fast. It'd be seven of its hands against two of ours. Or one of mine," she added darkly. Unit-02's right hand was still out there; teams were out there protecting it from the fires, and hopefully it would be recovered intact after the Angel was dead.

"And the pilot wouldn't be able to eject if they were lying on their back," Ritsuko pointed out.

"What if one of us climbed onto its back?" Shinji suggested. He stiffened as everyone turned to him. "I mean. Its core is in its neck, right? I could reach around and stab it from behind, and it wouldn't be able to reach me."

"The back isn't quite as big a blind spot as it looks," said Misato. "Ritz?"

Ritsuko backtracked and rolled the footage. A VTOL hovered behind the Angel and opened fire with a minigun. The bullets splashed off the AT Field; the Angel's head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, and the VTOL exploded.

"That's also assuming that its elbows work the same way humans' do," Ritsuko noted, "that it can't effectively reach behind itself. In a best case scenario, Magi predicts an 83% chance that the Unit would be disabled or destroyed without silencing the target."

"Do we have any better options?" Misato asked.

There was silence.

Rei's eyes slid from her to Shinji. "You said you were unwilling to use an N2 mine because of the risk that its field would redirect the damage to Central Dogma," she said, in her half-whisper voice. "That would not be an issue if it were delivered by an Evangelion."

"Well, not for us command crew, no," Ritsuko granted, "but then the Evangelion would be hit by the explosion, point-blank, with its AT Field down." She paused, then pulled up some highly classified schematics. "Although an Eva could theoretically endure a low-yield mine, if it hit the heavy chest armour plating. But a low-yield mine might not be enough to destroy the core … oh. Rei, you're a genius."

Rei and Shinji blinked in surprise. Asuka gaped.

Ritsuko typed up a simulation and ran it. It showed a wireframe of an Eva on the Angel's back with a bomb under the Angel. Then there was a feedback loop and everything turned to static.

"The explosion goes into the AT Field," Ritsuko explained, running it again frame-by-frame. "It's then duplicated and redirected to the Eva. Half the explosion hits the Eva; the other half hits the Angel and goes into its AT Field. This is then redirected back to the core. The same energy is duplicated near the Eva; half again goes into the AT Field."

Shinji blinked. "So … there's an … infinite number of explosions?"

"It's a convergent series," Asuka said, beaming that she had an opportunity to show off what she had learnt in college. "In total, the Angel is exposed to three times the bomb's energy, whereas the Eva only suffers one bomb's worth."

"Well, not exactly," Ritsuko said, ignoring Asuka's sour expression. "One of those three is delivered to the Angel's back, which won't affect the core, and destructive interference effects and energy losses would reduce the rest to about one point nine times … but there is a multiplier effect, yes. It should theoretically be possible to tune the magnitude of the bomb to be large enough to silence the target without destroying the Eva. Especially if we applied the P-type armour to that Unit."

"Um," said Makoto, raising a hand nervously. "That still means someone is going to have an N2 mine explode in their face."

There was an uneasy pause.

"I owe this thing one," said Asuka, waving her limp hand around. "Besides, that's no worse than diving into a magma pool, is it?"

"Yes, actually," said Ritsuko, "by several orders of magnitude."

"Vetoed," said Misato. "Asuka, your Unit is damaged. Have you ever ridden a mechanical bull? Scratch that, have you ever ridden one with one hand, while that hand is busy holding onto a bomb that could level a small town and the bull is shooting eye lasers at you?"

Ritsuko made a mental note to recommend a cap on the number of hours the Major was allowed to work per week.

Asuka glared and folded her arms. "I'm the top pilot. I can still do it."

Misato thought about this. It was obviously a bad idea and Asuka obviously knew this, but she was proud enough that she'd demand to do it anyway and then sulk when Misato overrode her.

She caught Ritsuko's eye and gave a thumbs-up behind her hips, angled such that Asuka couldn't see. "Would there be any additional risk to exposing a damaged Unit to the explosion?"

Ritsuko had a simple program which output a string of random numbers to a terminal, which she had written as an undergrad for when she wanted to show off to someone reading over her shoulder but couldn't be bothered doing any actual work. She ran it now. "The thermal and overpressure waves could sear the arm stump and permanently damage the nerve connections. There's a 56% chance we wouldn't be able to reattach the hand at all. And 34% that the pilot would suffer long-term psycho-somatic damage, including paralysis."

"Eh?" said Asuka, paling. "Make Shinji do it!"

"Wait, what," Shinji said.

"That's specifically if there's pre-existing damage," Ritsuko added. "You'd be fine."

"Doctor," Rei said softly. "Unit-01 was damaged. Four energy blasts to the chest armour."

Ritsuko looked Rei over with interest. She'd volunteered suggestions twice now. Something to think about later. "Not a problem. The armour was hot-swapped out, and the underlying damage was nominal."

"It will be dangerous," Misato said to Shinji. "I'm not going to order you to do this."

There was a blip on Ritsuko's computer. "Three hours before the Angel reaches Tokyo-3; two hours before the city is within an N2 mine's blast radius," she reported.

Shinji glanced at Rei and swallowed. "I'll do it," he said.

Asuka frowned. Rei remained impassive, as always.

…

Asuka looked anxiously down at her Eva's severed wrist. It was bound in bandages made of what looked like regular linen. Dr Akagi had said something about sympathetic reactions when she'd asked why they didn't put something tougher such as plate steel over it, let alone any of Nerv's high-tech composite armours; it was alarmingly obvious that the older woman was lying, and Asuka didn't like to think about what that implied.

In her remaining hand, she hefted their latest improvised weapon, which Misato called a custom-built Eva-sized bola, and which Asuka called two scrapped trucks welded to opposite ends of a long steel cable. A small pile of spares lay at her feet; Rei had more, and Shinji had one. The theory was that if they entangled the Angel's limbs, they might be able to restrain it for at least a few seconds without giving it enough energy to counterattack the Evas, and buy Shinji enough time to place the mine. Asuka swung her chained trucks around in circles, before deciding on a more direct outlet for her pre-battle jitters.

"Scared, Third?" she asked.

He obviously was. He had sat his Eva down and was examining the deadly little cylinder in his left fist. There was a world of difference between a scientist assuring him that he would be perfectly fine with the heavy armour protecting him, and actually voluntarily setting the bomb off. "I'm fine."

"Because if it were me, I would be. Maybe not _scared_ scared, but at least a little nervous, you know?"

They were sitting or standing at the base of a lightly wooded valley, where the explosion would be relatively contained and which Magi predicted the Angel would walk through in a minute or so. They could already see the thick smoke above and behind it, illuminated from below by the spot fires. Asuka was on the left, Rei on the right.

"I'm fine," Shinji said again, but there was doubt in his voice.

She scoffed. "Maybe we should wrap you in that heavy armour every time. Although it might make it hard if you wanted to run away."

Misato's scowling face appeared in her HUD. "Give it a rest, Asuka," she said. "The target's coming. Shinji, how does it feel?"

He got to his feet and took a few steps. He was much more ponderous than usual. "Hard to move," he admitted. "Like … like walking around with pillows under your clothes." The armour was mostly some sort of composite which added a lot to the bulk, with a mixture of overlapping plates and flexible polymers around the joints; Misato said it was one of the many equipment modifications which they kept at HQ 'just in case'. When Asuka had asked why they even had something which would slow them down so much in a fight, Misato had replied that it was the same kind of overpreparation that had allowed Asuka to fight the eighth and survive.

"You don't need to hit it," Misato reassured him. "Let the other pilots immobilise it and just get into position."

"Here he comes," said Asuka.

The great seven-armed Angel peaked the hill and began crawling down. At its touch, the undergrowth burst into flame. It had been going on a course slightly between Rei and Shinji; it turned slightly, directly toward Shinji. Asuka had the distinct impression that its eye sockets were just weapons, that it couldn't actually see, and just felt around by echolocation or sensing air currents or something; she couldn't begin to imagine how the world appeared to a monster like that.

"How long before it's low enough?" Shinji asked, nervously bouncing on the balls of his feet and uprooting a few small trees without noticing.

"Six seconds," Ritsuko reported. "Four, three, two, one, go."

Asuka and Rei swung their truck-bolas and threw them; they spun and wrapped around the Angel's arms. Shinji spun his, a moment later, and threw; it wrapped around the Angel's neck. Its eye sockets locked with him, and he felt a tightness around his own neck.

"Ghk!"

"Idiot!" Asuka snapped, twirling a second bola, and a third. "Go! That's the only way to stop it!"

The Angel braced itself with its two foremost arms. With its other two left hands, it grabbed one of Rei's cables and pulled; the steel softened, warped, and snapped. With two of its right hands, it began tearing off Asuka's bolas. With the last, it seized Shinji by the shin and threw him off balance.

"Aah!"

Asuka took up her last bola and swung it like a whip around the offending wrist, trying to pull it free; unfortunately, she didn't break its grip, and only pulled Shinji further off-balance. Another of its hands groped at her chest; she felt her temperature shoot up, and wrenched away in pain, staggering on her bad leg. More hands grasped at Shinji, and threw him over the Angel's shoulder; the N2 mine flew out of his hand, and he landed in the burning forest.

"Ikari!" someone cried.

"Pilot's synchrograph is plummeting," Makoto read out. "24% … thirteen … it's fallen below the absolute borderline! He's fallen unconscious!"

"Idiot," Asuka muttered. "Misato, what now?"

"Life signs are stable," Maya reported.

"The P-type armour is fireproof," Ritsuko said. "He'll survive where he is."

"Alright," said Misato. "Rei, Asuka, fall back. We'll – Rei, what are you –"

The blue Eva had run off without explanation. At this last, she turned around, and Asuka and the bridge could see that she'd picked up the N2 mine.

"Soryu," she whispered. "Escape."

"You're insane," Asuka said flatly, and Rei charged.

Asuka took a moment to size up the situation. The Angel had thrown off the last of the steel cables and trucks. Bits of twisted slag littered the ground around it. It had three limbs on Rei's side, all free. She didn't have a chance.

Ignoring her damaged leg, Asuka sprinted in front of the Angel, turned sharply, and body-slammed it. It caught her with its front-left arm, but she had enough momentum to plough forward and land over the next two, pinning that side down. They flipped over to paw at her; she felt the LCL sizzle around her chest, hip, and leg.

"_Go!_" she shrieked.

Rei vaulted over the red Eva and wrapped her legs around the Angel. She leant forward and shoved the N2 mine under the Angel's neck.

"Wait, but can Unit-00's armour take the blast?" Maya asked.

Without waiting for an answer, Rei hit the trigger, and the world turned to pure light.


	2. Rishon ben Lailah

Ritsuko stood in the Commander's office. As always, the cavernous space pressed down around her; the dim light from the Tree of Sephiroth was bright enough only to turn pitch black to gloom. The Commander sat before her; Fuyutsuki stood behind him, observing. Ikari radiated annoyance, even while keeping to his trademark pose, his fingers interlaced before his mouth.

"Report."

"The serum appears effective," she said. "Adam's status is back to as it was when we first acquired him. It's proven … resistant to analysis so far, but I should be able to keep him in check, if nothing else. The … factory … provided is working without complaint, but also without my understanding."

If she hadn't been dealing with and even creating worse nightmares for the past fifteen years, even she would have shuddered at the thought of the 'factory'. As was, she merely let a touch of disdain into her voice.

"That's good enough," Ikari said. He never was much of a scientist. "What about our battle readiness?"

If Ritsuko were a stupid woman, she might have thought this was his succinct way of asking about the Evas, their pilots, and the disposition of the UN troops around the city. "Rei will survive with no long-term complications," she said. "It was mostly only sympathetic pain; now that the palpitations have stopped, she's out of danger. She'll be cleared to go home in two days at the most."

"And the rest?"

"The other two Children were not harmed." This was technically untrue, but the Commander didn't care that she'd prescribed them a pack of aspirin and some sleeping tablets apiece. "Unit-00 was badly damaged; it won't be operational as more than a reserve for some time, I estimate three weeks." The explosion tore through the front plating and caused severe internal injuries; if the bomb had been just three percent more powerful or if the interference patterns had resonated even one percent more harmonically, Rei would have been blown to bits. "Unit-01 suffered only superficial damage. Unit-02's wrist was severed cleanly, but it still needs nerve optimisation and burn treatment; I estimate 85% combat efficacy in two days, and the remainder will return more or less by itself."

Ikari frowned. "You know how crucial the First Child is to the Scenario. You should never have allowed her into that situation."

"Katsuragi outranks me regarding operational matters, sir," Ritsuko said coolly.

Ikari glared. "You have the authority to countermand her when the Scenario is in question."

"It was already in question, sir. Both other pilots had already been wounded by the Angel. And …"

She was about to mention that Rei had in fact acted on her own initiative, but something she didn't understand stopped her.

"… and at that point, we needed all the firepower we could get," she finished.

"This will not happen again."

"… Very well, sir."

"It will not happen again because I will not allow the First to pilot again. The Marduk Institute has found the Fourth Child." He pushed a dossier across his desk. "You will synchronise him with Unit-00."

Ritsuko took the dossier and flipped it open to scan the first page, speaking while she read. "Sir, Second Branch has all but completed Unit-03, and I understand that Unit-04 is less than two months away. He would be more effective in combat if he were in a production model than the prototype."

"I have given you your orders, Doctor."

Ritsuko bit her lip but accepted it. There was no arguing with the man. Then she glanced back down at the photo of the Fourth Child and made several rapid leaps of logic. Her eyes widened.

"Sir, I think it's vital that this Child be kept out of Unit-00."

"You think?"

"Call it woman's intuition," she said, a catch-all excuse she developed at college for dealing with non-scientists when only a scientist would understand her reasoning.

"Will synchronisation be impossible?"

"Well – no, not as such, technically, but –"

"Then do it."

"But he wouldn't be able –"

Ikari's eyebrows tightened. "Do I need to replace you?" he asked coolly.

Ritsuko's voice shook in anger. "This is a bad decision. Won't you hear me out?" she asked. _M__ine is the profession that built Trinity. M__ay God save us all from men who give orders to scientists without listening when they tell you not to do a thing_.

Gendo gazed at her impassively. Fuyutsuki's expression wavered and he opened his mouth for a moment, but shut it again without saying anything.

"Fine," Ritsuko said. "Fine. I'll have the Fourth synchronise with Unit-00. May I ask what we will do with the later Units when they are completed?"

"I shall inform you in due time," Ikari said.

_Right. It's not like the head of the entire project needs to know minor details like who's going to pilot Eva, when it's a hybrid of at least four technologies we only halfway understand and the slightest mistake could see humankind go extinct. You petulant swine._ "Very good, sir." And she turned and left.

Fuyutsuki waited until her footsteps had faded away before addressing his superior. "Are you sure it's wise to antagonise her?"

"She won't leave," Ikari replied. "But she needs to be kept in her place."

"Seele said the same thing," Fuyutsuki said, his tone neither condoning nor condemning.

"Yes," was all Ikari said.

…

Asuka's nose twitched. Okonomiyaki.

She threw on something more than her nightclothes, combed her hair until it was presentable, and staggered out into the kitchen. Shinji had a stack of the savoury pancakes ready, with different ingredients on each. She rubbed her eyes and yawned.

"Good morning," Shinji said, giving her half a glance before double-taking and turning scarlet.

She glanced down. She was wearing a shirt about eight sizes too large which she had no recollection of owning, which was long enough to conceal her shorts: it looked like the shirt was all she was wearing. She considered hitting him for fantasising about her, but decided instead to see what happened if she pretended not to notice. It wasn't as though he'd do anything either way.

"Morning," she replied flippantly. "We have today off, right?"

Shinji glanced at the microwave's display, which doubled as a clock. 11:38 on a Monday. "I'm pretty sure the teacher knows not to expect us today," he said. His eyes flicked back to her thighs. "Um, Asuka … are you –"

"Hungry? Are you stupid? It's almost noon and I haven't eaten." She hopped up onto the counter beside the stove, fighting not to laugh at how his eyes tracked her thighs. "And we were up all night. Fighting the Angel," she added. "Not that you'd know."

"I was out cold for three minutes," he said, stirring the pan while staring at her legs.

"Which was plenty of time for me to kill it."

He blinked. "Wait, I thought it was Ayanami who –?"

Asuka rubbed one thigh against the other. Shinji yelped, then ran over to the sink to run his hand under the cold tap: he'd burnt himself. "Little Miss Honours Student does three things, Third. She grabs things, she throws things, and she commits suicide. She doesn't get credit for kills." She took the stack of okonomiyaki and helped herself.

"That's not really fair."

"Yeah? Name one time when she did something else."

He ran the fifth, ninth, and tenth Angels through his mind. "She neutralised the tenth's AT Field."

Asuka rolled her eyes and began massaging her thigh. "I think I'll go to the pool today. I feel a bit stiff."

"Me too," Shinji muttered.

"What was that?"

"Uh – well, yeah, I feel like swimming too. Hey, do you have Doctor Akagi's phone number? I want to ask how Ayanami's doing."

Asuka shrugged and swallowed another mouthful. "Call Nerv directly, if you care that much."

Shinji considered this. The Nerv call trees were legendary. Legendary and horrible. He suspected they made them deliberately obtrusive, just to stop people from hassling them; he blamed this, like most things, on his father.

There came the sound of a door sliding open, and out walked a bleary-eyed Misato, clearly having just woken up. Asuka narrowed her eyes at her guardian's appearance: bed hair, mismatched buttons, bare midriff, unshaven, penguin feathers stuck to indecently short shorts.

"Awake at last," she said sardonically. "Shinji, why don't you fetch the Major a beer, so she can welcome the dawn in traditional Japanese fashion?"

Misato yawned, scratched her head, and blinked at her. "Asuka? Why are you wearing Hyuga's shirt?"

Asuka's eyes widened, and she tore off the offending garment with a yelp. Shinji's eyes swivelled downward again, so she kicked him before rushing back to her room. "Idiot! Pervert!"

Misato walked over and set about finishing Asuka's pancakes. "It must have got mixed up with my laundry when he offered to do mine for me," she mused. "No idea how it wound up in her wardrobe, though. Sorry about that."

"It's okay," said Shinji, rubbing his hip where Asuka's foot had connected. It hurt more than usual; it felt like she'd got him right on the pelvis this time. "Do you have Doctor Akagi's phone number?"

…

Hikari was Class Representative for a reason. She liked to think she paid as much attention in class as anyone, and she was certainly the most responsible, for all that that wasn't an especially high bar. Still, her attention had to wander sometimes, as did her gaze.

At the front of the class, Asuka's seat was empty. The usual gaggle of hangers-on who surrounded her was bored and listless. It seemed odd to Hikari that they followed Asuka so slavishly; if they wanted her popularity to rub off on them, then they didn't make much use of it when she was out. It wasn't like her own friendship with the girl, which was a mixture of shared sensibilities, friendship, and actually enjoying one another's company, like friends were supposed to do. Further back was Rei's spot, which was empty as often as not anyway; and Shinji's. Her gaze naturally slid sideways, to Toji and Kensuke. She sighed wistfully, thinking it would be nice if Asuka were here. At least then she'd have someone she could talk to.

She did a double-take at Kensuke's screen. That definitely wasn't anything to do with the syllabus. Why couldn't he be more like … no, Toji wasn't really paying attention either. And if she exhorted him to be more like Shinji, he'd ask her whether that meant he was supposed to randomly skip one day in four. She tabbed into the laptops' IM program.

HorakiH: Aida! What do you think you're doing!

Kensuke glanced over his shoulder at her with a pathetically guilty expression, and she felt a thrill of schadenfreude. _Busted._

AidaK: come on, rep. even you arent listening.

She bit her lip. _He doesn't know that. He's just guessing. __Bluff him__._

HorakiH: Yes I am. He's talking about Second Impact.

Kensuke muttered something indistinct which may have been 'for a change'.

AidaK: look, the bells going to ring in two seconds anyway.

HorakiH: That's not the point!

AidaK: fine, ill pay attention til then.

The message arrived literally a split second before the lunch bell rang. She clamped down on her irritation to complete her duties.

"Rise! Bow! Sit! Dismissed!"

Kensuke gave her one look, sighed, and stayed where he was. Toji saw and stayed with his friend, as Hikari walked up.

"Told you you should've waited until after school," Toji said.

"What's so important you have to ignore a lecture to do it, anyway?" Hikari asked.

"Can you name two things that aren't?" Toji asked.

Hikari glared, then looked over Kensuke's shoulder. "A dating site? Don't you have to be over eighteen to use those?"

"Technically, shippers dot com is a friend-finding site," Kensuke said. "See? It says so, right there in the tagline."

Hikari's eyes skimmed the top of the screen, which read _I am a __male__ looking for __female__ company._ "Right."

"It's legal, and this site has a pretty good reputation. It's perfectly safe. I've restricted the age to mine plus or minus two years. I've done my homework on this."

"There's a first."

"Look, there's that big festival this spring, right?" Kensuke said. "We both know there's no girl in school who'd go with me. And that's fine, I understand, that's their right, and I'm okay with that. I'm a military nut, and most girls aren't interested in that, and that's fair enough; I'm not interested in girly stuff, either. I'm not complaining or anything. But an Angel could wipe Tokyo-3 off the map any day. And before I die, just once, I'd like to not be the loser moping around off to one side by himself at a party like this. It might not seem like such a big deal to you, but it matters to me. Is it really so much to ask for?"

Hikari glared.

"No. But that doesn't mean you have a blank pass to slack off during class."

Kensuke threw up his hands. "Fine, I'll leave it for my own time. I won't let it bother you any more."

There was a _ding_ from his computer. He checked. Technically, recess counted as his own time.

"A match?" Toji said, incredulously. Kensuke shot him a look. "I mean, a match that fast? I thought people usually took days to get responses." He looked back at Hikari. "What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"I meant, why are you still here? You've finished lecturing us, and it's lunchtime. Speaking of which," he added to Kensuke, "mind if we head out? I'm starving."

"Just let me send a reply; it'll only take a minute." Toji nodded and turned back to Hikari.

"Well," said Hikari, oddly drawn to Kensuke's computer, still reading over his shoulder. "I just, you know."

Kensuke raised his eyebrows.

"You're curious?" he asked.

"Well. A little."

He shrugged and followed the link to the girl's profile. "Murakami Yuki." There was a photo; a cute girl in a school uniform, grinning toothily and making V signs with both hands. "See? She looks normal enough."

"She looks like she's going to go for the throat," Hikari said.

"Well, then it's a good thing no-one's asking you to date her," Kensuke said. "What should I say … 'Let's meet after school on Friday at Mitsui Mall'? No, I don't want to sound bossy. 'Do you want to meet up, maybe Friday at Mitsui Mall'? Too wussy. What sort of honorifics do you use on girls? I don't want to sound too formal, especially if I'm going to see her more than once, but I don't want to be disrespectful or too forward …"

"I'll get you something from the cafeteria," Toji said, as he and Hikari left the classroom.

…

Sirens blared in Nerv HQ. Ritsuko gave a huff of exasperation, minimised her program, and headed out to the bridge. Angels took precedence over even the Commander's pet projects. The techs were already assembled, along with Misato and Fuyutsuki.

"Blue pattern detected! Confirmed ninety-three percent chromatographic match!"

"Summoning pilots; rerouting mass transit; readying plugs for insertion."

"Alerting the local and national governments and UN forces."

"Uh … the pattern is a little unusual this time. It's more like … azure? It's outside of established chromatic bounds, but sonometry confirms it's too big and too fast to be a whale. We thought it was irregular seismic activity at first, but …"

"It's an Angel," Ritsuko said, impatient. "What else could it possibly be?"

"Conventional defence capacity at 58% of nominal. Magi's computing its optimised deployment. Major, this is two attacks in two days. We're not ready for it."

"We'll deal with it," Misato said. "One way or another."

"Time to launch estimated at eight minutes. Target will make landfall in twelve."

"Unit-00 is too damaged for priority combat. Units -01 and -02 are at 92 and 73% of operational maxima. Finalising nerve configuration for Unit-02 in six minutes."

"Supplying prog knives and Unit-02's shoulder spikes. Interrupting software patches and rebooting OS for Unit-01 in fifteen seconds. Fourteen, thirteen …"

"Give me a visual," said Misato. Makoto hit a button, and a satellite image was projected against the wall. The target was a dark blur in the Sagami-nada Sea, heading almost due north toward the coast. A handful of fishing boats sped away; for whatever reason, most Angels attacked from that direction, so the local sailors had been thoroughly drilled in evacuation procedures. Writing skittered across the screen, showing estimates of the target's size, speed, time to landfall, and a host of other data that the techs usually kept to themselves, such as that it wasn't gamma radioactive and had no magnetic field.

"Pilots prepped to launch. Transport planes on standby."

"Launch!"

The Evas landed on the beach and inserted their power cables. Asuka opened a channel to Shinji and grinned. "This is totally just like the seventh, right? A beach party for two?"

"Yes. Maybe try not to be overconfident this time?"

"Shinji, have I ever told you you're a whiner? By the way, what are you making for dinner?"

"Isn't it someone else's turn to cook? For once?"

"Whose, Misato's? Don't you care about me, Shin-chan? Don't you care about Pen-Pen? Imagine poor, dear, sweet Pen-Pen, projectile vomiting into the toilet again …"

"_There is an Angel attacking,_" said Misato, wishing for the hundredth time that adults could pilot.

The Angel chose that moment to surface and begin lumbering up the coastal shelf to dry land. It was bright yellow and brought to mind a sculpture of a dog made by a toddler from wet sand; it had no head, and its body and four limbs quivered with each step, as though it might fall apart under its own weight. Its paws were long and shovel-like, and covered in angular grey material, like armoured boots. It was smaller than the last Angel, being maybe four fifths as tall and two thirds as long.

"Doesn't look like much," said Asuka, rotating her wrist. It kept playing up since being sliced off and reattached; she made a note to bring it up with Akagi again.

"Do they ever?" Shinji asked.

"You're whining again, Third."

"Listen up," Misato interrupted. "Asuka, engage the target, but be ready to fall back on my command. Shinji, stay in reserve until my command."

"What am I even going for?" Asuka asked. "I don't see a core."

"If it attacks, that will probably expose the core; it usually does," Misato said. "If it doesn't, well, feel free to tear it apart."

"See, Shinji? Show some optimism."

Shinji frowned but said nothing.

Asuka dashed forward to meet the Angel. It shivered as though seeing her despite its lack of eyes, and reared up for a one-two swipe with its grey claws; she danced backwards and swung her glaive to parry. The blade strained against an AT Field for a moment, before punching through. It sliced clean through one leg where the Angel's knee might have been if it had had an apparent skeleton; the foot flew off and LCL spurted out of the wound. Asuka jinked to the side, taking advantage as the Angel scrambled for balance, then leapt over it, bringing her weapon around an elegant arc, and slicing it neatly in half. LCL sprayed out of it; it collapsed like a punctured balloon and was still. She swivelled and pointed her glaive at it, ready in case this one turned out to be as hard to kill as the seventh.

There was ten seconds' silence.

"Was that it?" Asuka asked, disappointed and suspicious.

"Target is … silent," Maya said, sounding puzzled. "No AT Field detected."

"Yeah, but – seriously?" Asuka asked. "Two hits and it's dead? I mean, I _guess_ the second-last one was that easy, sort of, but … I didn't even get a core or anything."

The LCL streamed out into the ocean, staining it orange; the yellow skin and grey material were disintegrating into LCL, too, and in a few minutes, all would be gone. "I'm deploying a team to test the residue," Ritsuko said. "It looks like it's just Adamite LCL, in which case there's no further threat. That's inert without a core binding it together."

"I … am I really just that awesome?" Asuka wondered aloud, not even believing it herself.

"Well, that's that," said Ritsuko, rising and striding out. "Maya, deal with the post-mortem."

"Yes, Senpai," Maya said, a moment before the door hissed shut behind her boss.

…

Fuyutsuki knocked at the office door. "Do you have a moment, Doctor?"

"No," Rituko said curtly, not pausing her rapid touch-typing. "Not with the post-battle analysis, the synchronisation test on Thursday, and all the paperwork I need to get out of the way before then because I sure as hell won't have time after."

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," said Fuyutsuki.

Ritsuko sighed and waved him in. "Will you at least promise to talk to the Commander and try to get him to cancel?"

"That depends," said Fuyutsuki, walking in and taking a seat. "Why do you think it's a bad idea?"

"Well, the fact that it'll be an expensive flop is a part of it."

"So, your objection is entirely on technical grounds."

Ritsuko laughed without humour. "You could put it that way, why not."

"The Commander has other considerations. I don't necessarily agree with them, but …"

"The old men," Ritsuko guessed. She couldn't exactly see how this sort of failure could possibly help his cause, but politics never interested her much.

"Something like that."

Ritsuko lit a cigarette. Fuyutsuki noted that her ash tray was full. "Look. I realise that he has to play politics to keep Nerv financed. That doesn't mean I have to be his cat's paw. I'm in charge of Project E, maintaining the Magi, monitoring Rei's development, and guarding Adam. I don't have _time_ to waste on his power games. He's the head of Nerv; it's his responsibility to get the resources we need, not mine. That's leaving aside that it's just a plain bad idea."

"I notice you omitted some of your duties."

"Those are … longer-term objectives," Ritsuko said carefully. "Not urgent, which the others are. I postpone them whenever I'm too busy trying to stop Third Impact."

Fuyutsuki double-checked the door was closed, and that her computer fan was whirring too loudly for electronic eavesdroppers. "The Commander needs the synchronisation experiment to go ahead, but he doesn't strictly need you to be the one who oversees it. What if I volunteered to run the test myself?"

"Are you able? With all due respect, a first synchronisation is a non-trivial technical task, and you're an administrator."

"I seem to recall being a professor of metaphysical biology, once upon a time," Fuyutsuki smiled. "I'm familiar with the theory and the practical procedures."

"Would you also be willing to pick up whatever paperwork ensued?"

He gave her a look which told her he understood that she knew there would be paperwork aplenty after it was all over. "Of course."

Ritsuko surveyed him. "It would still be a bad idea, but I personally would have a little more free time. I could spare a few moments for research. Hoping for Instrumentality, Subcommander?"

He chuckled. "I think you and I have more in common on that count than you think."

"Is that so?"

"Gendo's Scenario is better than the Committee's, or than Third Impact, certainly," said Fuyutsuki, "but I still have unanswered questions. There are so many ways it could go wrong. He's willing to take those risks – well, of course he is – but for the rest of us …"

"… merely defeating the Angels and calling it a day would be better," Ritsuko nodded. "But if the Commander's plan doesn't succeed, then nothing will be able to pre-empt the Committee. Well, other than the Angels."

"Why don't you focus on them, and I'll deal with the Committee."

She raised an eyebrow. "You think you can?"

He gave a little smile. "I think I'll have to. Somehow."

…

Misato, Shinji, and Asuka sat around their dining table. They bowed in gratitude for the meal, and set about demolishing it. There was a period of relative silence, where the only sounds were the slurping of noodles and the clink of chopsticks.

Shinji tolerated it for a while, then fidgeted, then broke. "So, uh, Misato," he tried, "how was work?"

Asuka frowned. Normally she loved to boast after her battles and relive them blow-by-blow, but not this time, even though it was her cleanest win yet. It felt empty, pointless, even though she loved winning, and she'd thought that it was one of her sole driving forces. An easy win wasn't enough to satisfy her sense of pride.

"It was … pretty dull after the battle," said Misato, picking up on Asuka's mood. "The tests came back positive. It was just LCL. I guess there's no rule saying the Angels all have to be so strong? Maybe there'll be even weaker ones later on, maybe we're over the hump?"

None of them believed that, so none of them said anything for a moment. Shinji again broke first. "Well, um. Is there anything happening later this week?"

"No, it'll be incredibly boring, guaranteed, unless there's a third Angel in a week," Asuka supplied. "Seriously, what did you expect her to say?"

Shinji smiled. Her invective was much nicer than an awkward silence. It was familiar and comforting, like an old blanket.

"Honestly, for one of the most important people at Nerv who isn't a pilot, you have a ridiculously dull job," she added. "I'll bet you say it's classified at parties just so you can pretend it's more interesting."

"I do no such thing," Misato lied.

"Oh yeah? What do you tell them? 'Today, the vending machine ran out of salted peanuts, so I had to buy them from the cafeteria, and one of the disgusting sweaty maintenance guys brushed up against me and fondled my shoulder because I don't wear real clothes'?"

Shinji's eyes raked both girls' outfits. Neither covered more than a third of their skin.

"As a matter of fact, _today_ I found out that the Fourth Child has been found."

That stopped both Children cold, but only for a moment.

"Whaaat?" said Asuka. "Why do we need another stupid rookie coming in and messing up our strategy? We only have three Evas. What's he going to do, shoot spitballs at the Angel? Who is it, anyway?"

"No-one you know," Misato lied, not wanting to go into the details over dinner. "And he's being synched to Unit-00 on Thursday." Asuka had used an ungendered form of 'he'; Misato did not.

Asuka let out a snort. "You mean you're finally bumping the honours student?" She paused. "Less than a week after she killed the eleventh Angel? What gives?"

Shinji blinked at the doublethink. Did Asuka think she was the one who killed it, or Rei?

Misato almost corrected her – Rei had in fact killed the twelfth Angel – before remembering that the Commander had placed a thorough gag order around the real eleventh; only she and the bridge technicians knew, not even Rei. Ritsuko had begun referring to it semi-ironically as the ten point fifth Angel. "I don't know why; that's the Marduk Institute's business. I know that Ritz wasn't happy about it. I also know that it's going to be dangerous."

Shinji thought back to what he knew about Unit-00's first activation, when Rei had been put in traction for months. "Is it because it's Unit-00? Wouldn't it be better to have him be a reserve for Unit-01 or -02?"

"No, because if you let the idiot rookie touch my Unit-02, I will _unmake_ both him and whoever ordered it," said Asuka. "But yeah, Unit-01 would make more sense."

Misato shrugged. "Not my decision. Take it up with the Commander." Meaning: don't take it up. "However, that leads into something I was going to tell you anyway. There's still a risk of something going badly. The Subcommander has moved the tests to Matsushiro, and he wants extra security."

"Like, the UN?" Shinji asked. "What could they do against an Eva?"

There was a pause.

"Oh," he said.

"Actually, even a worst-case would only be a one-Eva job. After all, -00 is still pretty much crippled from the second-last battle; even if it went berserk, it shouldn't be too hard to disable. And I want Asuka there, not you."

"You want me to sit in the plug all day, watching some idiot learn to wiggle his little finger? That sounds even more boring than a synch test. Send Shinji. He won't pay any attention in class anyway."

"Hey! Neither would you!"

Misato chose to ignore this. "Ritsuko said the nervous stimulation from being piloted would help Unit-02's wrist recovery. You need to spend the hours in there anyway. Might as well make yourself useful."

Asuka harrumphed.

"How does Rei feel about all this?" Shinji tried.

"I'm sure she's not upset," said Misato.

"That's always a safe bet," Asuka agreed. "You realise that having me, the top pilot, be tied up guarding another, weaker Eva is stupid, right? This entire operation is stupid?"

…

"This is so stupid," Asuka groused the next day, jiggling her plugsuited foot.

"I know," Misato replied. "Do you know _how_ I know? Because you told me less than three minutes ago, and again less than three minutes before that, and again less than three minutes before that …"

Misato was in her office, trying to make sense of the reams of paperwork. The same general who'd wanted to station his tanks in Tokyo-3's main business district had proposed a 'compromise' solution wherein he'd park his artillery there instead and move the tanks to a highway which, she was pretty sure, was a) already prone to traffic jams, because it was one of the main arterial roads connecting the city to the rest of Japan, and b) not rated for that much weight. Meanwhile, she had a radio link open to Unit-02. Asuka had done nothing but complain, and Misato's patience was wearing thin, but she had an inkling the girl would wander off if no-one watched her.

"I never thought I'd hear myself wishing I were taking a synch test. Or one of those battle sims. I'd kill for the opportunity to kill something right now. Is Kaji at HQ? Put him on. I want to talk to him. It's been ages since I talked to him. Is he hiding from me? He can't have left Japan without telling me."

Misato heaved a sigh. "I'll go and look for him." She muted the connection and opened one to Fuyutsuki. "Subcommander, how long do you have to go?"

"Not long," he reported. "He's suited up with no problems; we're inserting the entry plug now. Are you feeling anxious?"

"Asuka's bored, sir. A bored teenager in a divine killing engine is a bad thing. Maybe we could let her talk to the Fourth? I don't think she likes him, but at least she wouldn't be bored."

"You know that would interfere with his synchronisation."

_So would a __biomechanical __red giant __who decided to play __hacky sack__ with bits of wall_. "I never understood that. Isn't that unrealistic? Wouldn't it be better to have synch tests emulate real combat situations, with noise and so on?"

"Are you asking me for a lecture on synchronisation theory, Major?"

"I might not understand any of it, but it least it wouldn't be another half hour of shrill, pubescent whining."

He chuckled. "Isn't she supposed to be stretching its wrist? Make up a game she can play with her right hand."

Misato's first thought would probably have been considered misuse of military equipment, and quite possibly grounds for her removal as Asuka's legal guardian. "Sir." She switched back to Asuka's channel. "No, God only knows where he's wandered off to now; he's not in his office. Probably chatting up one of the secretaries. Do you have something like a cheerleader's baton handy?"

"What, inside the plug?"

"Something Eva-scale. You're supposed to be using your hand to rehabilitate its nerve connections, right? Find something and twirl it around your fingers."

"That's pretty lame, Misato. Even by your standards."

"If you can't do that, you'll get taken apart by the next Angel."

"Pfft. Not likely. That last one was pathetic. Besides, there's nothing like that around here. Well, there are forklifts, but I'm pretty sure those aren't designed to withstand that sort of force. Also the drivers would probably complain."

"Look. You're the top pilot and a university alumnus. Think of something. I'm busy."

She killed the connection and focused on her paperwork. Two minutes later, Fuyutsuki called her.

"Major, is there any reason why our security detachment just dropped a Progressive Knife in the path of one of our maintenance crews?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Because Ritsuko couldn't think of a way to run an Eva which doesn't require a neurotic fourteen-year-old. Excuse me." She reopened the connection to Unit-02. "Asuka, two things. One, don't play with the thing we use to kill Angels. It's not a toy. Second, don't play with _anything_ when there are people forty metres below. _Nothing_ is a toy then."

"There are people _everywhere._"

"Asuka …"

"Fine! I'll just sit here and do nothing. I'll pretend I'm the First." She lasted all of ten seconds. "Can you at least pipe some music in here?"

Misato rolled her eyes and opened the Nerv media server. The first song listed was too fast and would probably just get her even more agitated. The second was Muzak and would tick her off even more. She scanned down until she found one with a German name and double-clicked it. That should keep her happy.

Asuka stopped fidgeting to listen. The song had a nice, mellow piano-and-drums intro, before what sounded like strings, then a woman singing in English. She let the soothing music wash over her for a minute, before paying attention to the words. It took her a moment to realise because it was so incongruous and she hadn't spoken much English lately, but the lyrics were actually _incredibly_ depressing.

Fuyutsuki had a feed of her entry plug open, and relaxed a little when he saw she had calmed down. "Alright," he said. "Initiate contact in three … two … one … contact."

The diodes flashed green. The pilot was accepted.

His little team of underqualified technicians let out a breath of relief. They weren't out of the woods yet, but it was all downhill from here, or so they were told.

"Start system phase 2," he ordered.

His phone chirped. "Fuyutsuki."

"Good morning, Subcommander." It was Ritsuko. "Is the test going well?"

"We're just about to start, Doctor."

"Were you telling the truth, back in my office?"

"Of course."

"Then I have some advice for you. But you'll need to follow my instructions exactly and quickly."

Fuyutsuki considered this. He knew the doctor could be ruthless and manipulative when the mood took her; it could easily be some sort of a ploy. On the other hand, he had a good idea that one day he would be up against worse enemies than mere Angels, and when that day came, he would need every ally he could get. "Very well."

"Good. Tell your staff that you need to leave for a minute. Tell them to keep following the checklist."

He relayed the orders. One of the technicians looked up at him nervously.

"Who will supervise, sir?" he asked.

"You will," Fuyutsuki said. "Just follow the instructions exactly until I get back."

Ritsuko leafed through schematics and hacked feeds of Matsushiro's security cameras. "Go straight here … take the elevator down to basement five. Reception will be blocked once you're underground. When the door opens, you will see an emergency hatch on your left. You'll have … about twenty-five seconds to open it, go through, and shut it behind you. Make sure the seal is tight. Once the door is shut, you'll know what to do."

"I see. Is there an assassin on the other side?"

"Not today. Good luck, Su–" And the line crackled out.

He pocketed the phone. She was asking for a lot of trust. On the other hand, if she wanted to kill him, realistically she could have managed it much more easily than this. She was the only one who really understood the Magi; if she wanted to kill anyone, she could engineer an accident with the life support at any time.

Asuka heaved a sigh as the song wound up. This must be how Shinji felt all the time. She felt a pang of pity for him.

A hologram of Lt. Aoba appeared in her HUD. "Uh, Pilot Soryu? Is everything all right there?"

"I guess," she said. "Why?"

"I'm remotely monitoring the situation, and I've noticed two things. One, your synch ratio's dropped six points. Two, it looks like there's a high-energy reaction in the test chamber."

"Huh. Well, the Subcommander hasn't said anything to me, so it can't –"

…

Shinji's phone rang. The teacher broke off, and the class turned to stare at him. He exchanged glances with Rei, who was wreathed in bandages and had been since the eleventh Angel. Her phone was silent. It wasn't as though she had an Eva to pilot. He raised his to his ear. It was the standard automated emergency message.

Kensuke exchanged glances with Toji.

…

Asuka stirred, then checked her HUD. She was on battery power, with four and a half minutes left. That thing must have stunned her when it hit her with that wall. She pushed herself up onto her knees, dislodging a few tons of debris, and then rose to her feet.

Unit-00 stood in what was left of the testing chamber. She noted it still had its entry plug in. It roared defiance at the world; its skin and armour were still damaged from the N2 explosion, but while she watched, both began slowly restoring themselves to normal.

Asuka retrieved her prog knife. "All right, you Eva-shaped piece of plasticine. You want to _go?_"

Shigeru's face reappeared. "Soryu, it's still one of our Units, not an Angel. Try not to damage it too much. And definitely don't hit the plug; the pilot's still in there."

Her power cable had been blown off, but Unit-00's was still in. "Here's an idea, why don't you turn its power off?"

Shigeru sent some commands. "Its battery was only charged for ten seconds; it should … um … it's not using its battery. There's an independent transmitter for reporting energy reserves, and it's saying it's not draining. That's funny."

Asuka rolled her eyes, activated her knife's resonance function, and lunged. She bounced off Unit-00's AT Field.

"Some actual _help_ would be nice," she remarked, dodging the Eva's retaliatory swipe.

"This is a low-risk day. I'm the only senior tech on duty. I've sent alerts, but most of us will probably take at least ten minutes to get here."

Ritsuko strolled up, a coffee in hand. She was always on duty. "Well, this definitely wasn't expected by anyone," she remarked. The feed from Unit-02 showed Unit-00 landing a glancing blow with a girder; she watched it with the air of one watching a TV show that was only on because it was on after another, more entertaining program that had just finished.

"Dr Akagi! Unit-00's gone berserk. I'm trying to shut it down, but …"

"… but berserk Evas tend to have other ideas about that. Hmm. No draw on the battery reserves, an unusually strong AT Field, it's regenerating, the pilot's synchrograph isn't transmitting, and it's trying to kill Asuka. If I didn't know better, I'd say that was an Angel. Either that, or all my dreams have come true at once; that's everything I could ask for from an Eva."

Shigeru gaped. "What are you saying? That it's been infected somehow?"

"No, don't mind me. I'm just thinking aloud. See the spectrograph; its blood pattern hasn't changed." She sipped her coffee, then made a face and upended it into a nearby potted plant. "Oh, Asuka? Try to get its entry plug clear. That poor boy must be suffering something terrible."

Shigeru gave Ritsuko a look. He wasn't stupid.

"Right," Asuka said. She tore at the rogue Eva's AT Field; it took another swing at her. She twisted to deflect the blow with her shoulder pylon, then tackled it to the ground. It rolled on top of her; she sliced off the armour plate over its entry plug, reached in, and tore it out.

"The target has engaged battery power!" Shigeru reported. "Six seconds!"

It took a spite swing at the entry plug; Asuka twisted her arm around and let the plug roll out of reach, before headbutting Unit-00 and pummelling its stomach. "No you don't, you stupid, weak, useless, overgrown marshmallow!"

It went silent.

"The target's batteries are exhausted," Shigeru reported.

Asuka checked her own: three and a half minutes. "Of course. Is there a power jack around here, or have they all been blown up?" Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the entry plug open, and a slim, long-limbed figure in a dark plugsuit climb out and lope into the rubble. She ignored him to search for the jack. He would keep.

The Fourth Child nimbly picked his way through the piles of rubble left in the wake of his Eva's rampage. His old masters would be fascinated to hear his perspective on it.

The debris had largely been blown clear; the corridors were littered with dead workers and other detritus, but this presented no real obstacle, not for someone young and slim and agile. He quickly found an elevator shaft and slid down a girder. Basement five was quite sturdy; there was nothing worse than plaster dust down here. He found the hatch to the bomb shelter and rapped on it. The hatch swung open.

"Hello again," Fuyutsuki said, looking around. "How did you know I was here?"

"Call it a lucky guess. Just as it was lucky that you thought to come here before the explosion, Fuyutsuki Kozo," Kaworu said with a smile.


	3. Tabris

Twelve monoliths glowed in the Commander's office. This time, Ikari was alone: Fuyutsuki was officially still missing. He took this in stride.

"Ikari," 01 began without preamble. "You have failed us again."

Ikari rolled his eyes behind his glasses. "I acted on false information," he corrected. "Don't try to blame me for the Marduk Institute's incompetence."

"You knew the Fourth would have that reaction with Unit-00," accused 03. "You arranged this."

"I trusted that Marduk's recommendation would have some capacity to pilot," Ikari replied. "If you need a scapegoat so desperately, blame the fool who foisted that useless Child on us. I shall, of course, have him removed from Tokyo-3 forthwith."

He was well aware that the Marduk Institute was controlled by Seele, and that they had their own reasons for sending Nagisa to Nerv yesterday. Most likely he was a spy, intending either to map the fortress out for their ultimate attack, or to steal Adam back. Probably both. Knowing that his so-called benefactors couldn't admit what they all knew was the most satisfying part of these meetings. That, and screwing them over.

"The Marduk Institute was not in error," said 11. "The Fourth is a suitable Eva pilot."

"His début synchronisation left our testing facility a smoking ruin," said Ikari. "It was only due to the intervention of the Second Child that the incident was contained."

"Nevertheless," said 06, "the failure had less to do with any intrinsic lack of ability than the fact that he was assigned an inappropriate Evangelion. Try him again with one of the other Units."

"If this _extrinsic_ lack of ability appeared in the context of one of the combat Evas, or worse, during an attack, we could be unable to subdue it without inflicting critical damage, leaving us with only two Units. Assuming the pattern of progressively stronger Angels over time continues without further deviations, this would pose an unacceptable risk … unless we had another Eva for the test."

The monoliths shouted over one another in their outrage. 01 let it continue for a minute before clearing his throat; the noise instantly died down. "You are not content with three Evangelions, Ikari?"

"Three Units were barely enough against three of the four most recent Angels," not counting the one he still insisted had never existed. "If the Council expects Nerv to risk two of those three while continuing to defeat ever-stronger Angels – bearing in mind that a single defeat would mean Third Impact, and the failure of the Scenario – then a fourth is essential. After all, we cannot forget the possibility of another … accidental … power failure during an attack, since the investigation into the last one was inconclusive."

"The last Angel was easily within Nerv's capacity," 07 observed. "A single Eva sufficed to dispatch it."

"It demonstrated that Angels are in fact capable of attacking in very rapid succession, contrary to what the Dead Sea Scrolls indicated. If a strong Angel had attacked then, then with our limited repairs, we could have been overrun. And if any of the Scrolls' other predictions are mistaken, there's no guarantee that any of our plans will be effective."

"And what guarantee do we have, Ikari, of your plans?" asked 08. "If you control four Evas and pilots, Lilith, Adam, the Lance of Longinus, and three Magi, you would be in an excellent position to subvert the Scenario to your own ends."

"Your Scenario is my Scenario," Ikari replied. "In any case, Third Impact is in neither of our interests. Add whatever oversight you consider appropriate, but it is vital that we receive Unit-03 or -04 before the next attack, with enough time to synchronise the Fourth and ideally to train with the other pilots. It is also vital that we receive the budget for a new testing facility," he added, repressing the urge to snigger.

"You expect us to believe you would accept a leash so readily?" asked 12.

"I am Seele's loyal agent," Ikari said. It didn't really count as a lie if no-one present believed it.

"The Council will consider your request," said 01. "Leave us." Ikari vanished from the holographic conference. "Where is Tabris?"

"My sources report he is still in Matsushiro," said 03. "He should have intelligence within 36 hours."

"Assuming Ikari does not deport him. Or execute him," 04 observed.

"He would not dare," said 02.

"You think _Ikari_ would not dare?" 08 asked, amused. "Have you never met the man? At this point, I suspect his desire to secure Unit-03 is the only thing keeping Tabris alive."

"On a related note, my ward grows rebellious," said 12. "We request permission to tighten security in the Himalayas facility."

There was a vote. Six ayes, two nays, four abstentions. 01 abstained. Permission granted.

"There remains the question of Units -03 and -04," said 08. "If we do, Ikari has gained more power over us; but if we do not, Tabris will die, and we risk Third Impact."

"Unacceptable," said 05. "My country has invested far too much to see them ceded to Ikari."

"When Eschaton arrives, we will still have the power to defeat Nerv, should the need even arise," 03 said. "The mass-produced Units will outnumber four Evas. And we have no shortage of pilots."

"Any power Ikari may gain from an additional Unit is therefore illusory," 01 ruled. "And let us not forget, there will be four Evas in Nerv, but there will not be four with pilots loyal to Ikari. Tabris is not merely a spy; he is our vanguard."

"This is outrageous," 05 insisted. "I demand recompense for my losses."

"You shall have it," 01 said. "For now, though, Tabris must have his chariot. Give the order. Authorise the deployment."

…

"Hurry up, Third! We're going to be late!"

"We wouldn't" puff "be late" pant "if you hadn't" huff "overslept!"

"Oh, it's so easy for you to say, mister 'I'll show up half an hour after the action's already over'!"

"Just hurry" gasp "we're almost there!"

The two Children ran up the stairs and down the corridor and reached Classroom 2-A just as Hikari finished her rise-bow-sit routine. Hikari gave Asuka a 'We're friends, but do you really have to do this so often?' look.

The teacher gave them a glance and shrugged. He and Nerv had an arrangement: he didn't give the Children too many detentions, and Section Two didn't shoot him. "Please take your –"

"Reh?" Asuka exclaimed, pointing. "What the hell is _he_ doing here? I thought you were dead!"

Shinji got his breath and looked over her shoulder. A handsome, elegant boy he'd never seen before was lounging in a seat at the back. The boy had a wide smile, grey hair, and red eyes. They didn't get many transfers _into_ Tokyo-3, target of all the Angel attacks.

"No; I survived yesterday just fine, Pilot Soryu," he said affably. "But thank you for your concern."

"I don't mean _yesterday_, I mean _seven years_ – wait, _yesterday?_ Don't tell me it was _you_ who –"

"Asuka!" Hikari snapped, turning pink.

"Please take your seats," the teacher repeated.

Fists clenched and face red, Asuka marched to her desk, booted up her laptop, and began typing forcefully, as though the keyboard had done her a great personal wrong, not even pretending to be taking notes with it.

SoryuA: what are you do here?

Shinji winced. She was so angry she'd used the public rather than private message function without realising, and her kanji were off. There was no stopping her now.

NagisaK: I'm a student here now. Major Katsuragi said that all the pilots were to enrol here, so that Nerv's security could protect us all appropriately.

SoryuA: your the 4th child! that lying skank said i didnt know you!

Kaworu's smile curved upward for a moment, as though he were suppressing a snort of laughter. Shinji was surprised that Kaworu didn't seem to be attracting as much attention as Shinji had when he was first outed as a pilot, in that he wasn't being mobbed; perhaps the novelty of pilots had worn off after the first three, or perhaps it was just that he hadn't killed any Angels yet. On the other hand, more than a few girls were eyeing him with interest.

NagisaK: Perhaps she thought you might react badly?

SoryuA: ugh, shut up, smarmy

SoryuA: how you even still alive?

NagisaK: Well, I suppose I didn't die. What do you expect me to say?

SoryuA: freaking great. your back for all of two minutes and your already spout your stupid evasive nonanswer bullcrap

SoryuA: why are you still here? its pretty obvious you cant pilot. i mean, normal if i said that id just mean you were a crap pilot, but at least those idiots sit on your left dont blow up Nerv whenever they get in the plug.

SoryuA: pretty big usability issue there

NagisaK: I don't know what to say, except the synchrographers think it's worth a try! I believe a new Eva is scheduled to arrive shortly, and that I shall be expected to synchronise with that instead.

SoryuA: synchrographer isnt even a word smarmy. their waste a production model on you?

HorakiH: Asuka, Nagisa just got here. You'll fluster him!

SoryuA: look at him, hikari. he doesnt get flustered. he just sits there, smirking like a jackass.

Hikari, who alone was halfway trying to listen to the lecture, glanced at him. He was indeed still smiling, unfazed by Asuka's invective. In fact, all of the girls had taken more than a few looks at him. The only exception was Rei, who had given him only a perfunctory glance when he came in, before returning to stare out the window.

AidaK: theres another eva coming? whats it like? spill!

NagisaK: I'm afraid I don't know much about it; they don't tell pilots much about technical details. I think it's built from the same specifications as Pilot Soryu's; I heard something about mass production. The only difference I know of is that this one is orange.

SakakiT: Mister Nagisa, if you're new to Tokyo-3, would you like me to show you around town after class?

Sakaki's friends giggled at her forwardness, and fell over themselves to volunteer to help. Asuka scowled at their vapidity, until her attention was redirected to her laptop by a private message.

IkariS: Asuka, how did you know Nagisa before yesterday?

SoryuA: he was one of the three candidate children at Nerv-Germany, there was this training school there. i hated him. one day there was an accident with him and the other candidate, and i was sure they both died. they mustve just been moved to other facilities than mine. Nerv was probably afraid of losing all their pilots at once.

It occurred to Shinji that he still had no idea how Children were selected. He and Rei were both Japanese, and Asuka and Nagisa were apparently both half-German, so they probably weren't randomly selected from all the children on Earth. Perhaps it was genetic? That would imply that Asuka and Kaworu were related, and himself and Rei.

IkariS: Is he related to you somehow?

SoryuA: are you stupid? we look nothing alike, we ACT nothing alike, hes a smarmy idiot and cant pilot, why would you even ask? NO!

IkariS: Sorry! It's just that, you know. You're both pilots. You're both half-German.

IkariS: You're about as tall as each other?

She swivelled around to give him an incredulous stare, because mere words could not articulate her disbelief at his stupidity. Then she turned back to her computer to try anyway.

SoryuA: do … do you think theres only one family in all of Germany? seriously, give me a hint here.

IkariS: Sorry!

SoryuA: i could almost believe smarmy was related to ayanami, with the eyes and the fact theyre both really weird, if she werent pure Japanese.

Shinji glanced back at Nagisa. He was looking around the classroom, touch-typing and only occasionally reading the IMs on his screen. After a moment, Shinji realised he was putting faces to names by following who was typing when, and was impressed: he himself had only really managed it with three people who weren't pilots, and he'd been there for months.

On his screen appeared a group conversation between Misato and all four pilots.

MajorlyMisato: Hi guys. Wanted to let you know the synch test is cancelled today.

IkariS: Okay.

IkariS: Wait, how are you on the school network? I thought it was private.

There was a pause.

MajorlyMisato: Is that a serious question?

SoryuA: a better one is, how come your name isnt locked like the rest of ours are?

MajorlyMisato: Because I didn't want it to be. :)

_MajorlyMisato has left the conversation._

NagisaK: I suppose that gives us time to introduce ourselves properly after school.

SoryuA: the idiot and i cant. well have to hurry home to feed the penguin. oh well, too bad, so sad.

_SoryuA has left the conversation._

NagisaK: … the penguin? Was that the autocorrect?

IkariS: No, we really do live with a penguin, and he does usually like a late lunch. Sorry.

IkariS: She probably will want me to go with her. Rei's probably free? Or we'll meet up properly at Nerv another day?

NagisaK: I look forward to it, Ikari Shinji. :)

_NagisaK has left the conversation._

_IkariS has left the conversation._

Rei's gaze finally swept down to her monitor. In so doing, she took the tiniest glance at Shinji, and again when she looked back up to the window.

Two more private messages appeared on Kaworu's screen, both in German. His smile flickered for a moment, before recovering. He answered the more obnoxious one first.

?: What do you have to report?

NagisaK: The teacher here is quite obsessed with the post-Impact wars. I don't think the other Children are going to have very good groundings in the sciences or arts. It's a shame.

NagisaK: I hope there's a music room here. I haven't played in days.

?: Do not trifle with us, Tabris! What about Nerv?

NagisaK: I haven't been allowed into HQ yet. I have nothing to report aside from school.

He hesitated for a moment, but it wasn't quite a lie. He also had his impressions of the other Children, and a lot of conjecture about certain other individuals, but they were after all students at the school, and guesswork wasn't really information, no matter how accurate it probably was.

NagisaK: Incidentally, I'm in class right now, and I assume this network is monitored.

?: Outside of this connection, it is.

NagisaK: Mmhmm. But it's still susceptible to side channel attacks, such as other students reading over my shoulder.

Since he was at the back, there was in fact no-one who could, but he still took the excuse to close the window and focus on the other.

TM: This sucks.

NagisaK: Oh? What sucks?

TM: There are guards everywhere. I'm not allowed to do anything. I can't see anything from my window. And you haven't even been online to cheer me up. Why not? Have they raised your security too?

NagisaK: Not exactly.

TM: Oh? Why not? Or why have they increased mine?

NagisaK: I expect they're more worried about you, Schätzchen, since they can't really guard me any more. Nerv wouldn't approve. I'm in Tokyo-3 now.

TM: What? Seeing the city?

NagisaK: As a matter of fact, five lovely young ladies have just offered me a tour. I'm the Fourth Child now. I'm sorry; I would have told you sooner, but the past few days have been very eventful, and Mrs Bauer's kept me blacked out.

NagisaK: I'll tell you all about it; just give me a moment, there are other people trying to talk to me.

There came a flurry of messages from other students, and he replied to them and tabbed out to take notes on what the teacher was saying, including the phrase 'glorious resolution' which struck his fancy for some reason. It wasn't until several minutes later that he realised that his second secret correspondent had been silent for a while.

NagisaK: Are you still there, Schätzchen?

NagisaK: Please.

NagisaK: Don't do anything rash.

NagisaK: Schätzchen.

NagisaK: Schatz?

NagisaK: Oh dear.

Seele would definitely want to hear about this. On one hand, he had a good feeling for what she would do, and what their reaction would be, and she'd really appreciate a head start. On the other, if she did do what he thought she would, there was literally no way they could not find out about it, and it would strengthen their trust in him if he told them first. His instinct was to keep quiet, but it wasn't really a choice if you always did the same thing.

NagisaK: Sir?

?: I told you not to contact us outside of emergencies. What is it?

NagisaK: An emergency. You should contact 12. I have a premonition of doom in the Himalayas.

…

"There's not much to do now," Misato said to her crew. "Not when we're waiting on the construction crews to fix Matushiro. Stay on call until six, but I'm calling this an early weekend. See you all Monday."

"A whole weekend?" Shigeru mused, gathering his things. "I can't remember the last time we had one of those."

"I know, right?" said Makoto. "Hopefully it'll give me time to find a new apartment."

"What's wrong with your old one?" Maya asked, following them out of Central Dogma.

"Rei stepped on it. During the battle with the tenth." Maya winced.

"He's been sleeping on my couch ever since," Shigeru added.

"And no offence man, but it's time I got my own place again," Makoto said.

"No complaints here. 'Waah! Stop playing that sweet Strat just because it's eleven pm, Shigeru!'"

"I swear, if I hear _Wonderwall_ one more time, Unit-00 won't be the only one going berserk."

"Doesn't Nerv provide housing for employees?" Maya asked.

"Yes, but it's awful," said Makoto. "Imagine one of those sardine student rooms, except that instead of being full of intelligent, interesting college students going through an experimental phase, it's packed with chain smoking janitors and despair."

"Well, it can't be too hard to find a good place," Maya said brightly; Ritsuko had inoculated her against cigarette smoke. "A lot of people have moved out of Tokyo-3 since the Angels started coming. There have to be plenty of cheap rooms."

As their voices faded from hearing, Misato reopened the tarball of satellite photos that Ritsuko had sent her earlier. The first was at low zoom, and showed a mountaintop. It looked as though someone had picked a fight with it and very nearly won: the peak had been blown off. There were pieces of a burnt-out ruin scattered about, still smoking, partially buried by snow. A pair of Hawk VTOLs was apparently out on patrol, and there was a photo of the wreckage of a third, crumpled like a piece of paper and crashed in the snow. There were shots of miscellaneous bits of rubble; a plate of metal, twisted and carbon-blackened but on which, miraculously, one could still read N2; and something which might once have been part of a simulation entry plug. The email included the coordinates and timestamp, which were in the Himalayas, early afternoon, or mid-morning local time. She shook her head, closed the file, finished the last of her urgent paperwork, arranged for extended hours for the weekend shifts, and switched her computer off. She stretched and arched her back, eliciting pops all down her spine.

"Knock knock," said Kaji, appearing in her open doorway. "I was worried I'd miss you."

"You should be more worried about whether I miss you," Misato replied, moving her arm so that her gun was clearly visible against her jacket. "Nobody likes a tattletale. What do you want?"

"Oh, lots of things. Money. Love. I'd settle for a few drinks."

Misato considered emphasising her gun again, but on second thoughts, they really had to clear the air at some point. "Why not?"

…

When the final bell rang and Kaworu stood to leave, he was mobbed by girls. He took it in stride and led them from the room. Asuka glared at Hikari, who was trailing along behind him, but the class rep paid her no attention.

"_Come on,_" she snapped at Shinji. She grabbed his wrist and pulled him from the room.

"Wait," Kensuke began, "Shinji, I was hoping –"

But Asuka shot him such a ferocious look that he shut up without another word.

"Jeez, I didn't think he was _that_ good-looking," Toji said, of Kaworu. "Maybe you should try selling photos of him to the girls. He'd probably be happy to model them for you. He gives off that sort of vibe, you know?"

Kensuke stared after him, wishing Misato would let him pilot, before returning to the task at hand. "Yeah. So, um, Toji. You know I have that date with Murakami now, right?"

"Right. So I'm walking home alone today. No worries. Let me know how it goes."

"No! I meant, you have to come with me."

Toji raised an eyebrow. "You realise dates are usually for only two people, right? Wait. Are you trying to set me up with a friend of hers or something?"

"What? No. I've never been on a date before, Toji. What am I supposed to do?"

The bigger boy shrugged. "I don't know. You're going to the mall, right? Shop. Or get something to eat. Or see a movie or something. There's probably an arcade there. Mall things. If you don't know what people do at malls, why did you ask to see her at one?"

"And what if I can't carry a conversation? What if I get nervous? You have to come. Just for a little bit."

"You – somehow – get a date with an alright-looking girl, and literally the first thought you have is to turn it into not a date? I know I'm not an expert, but don't you think she might not like it if she's expecting to see you alone and you have someone with you?"

Kensuke gave him a pleading look. He sighed.

…

Maya slid her apartment door shut and heaved a sigh. Working for Nerv was rewarding – she was under one of the most brilliant scientists on Earth, at the top of her field, and helping save the human race, after all – but it could be exhausting. One really had to become one's job; it didn't leave a lot of time to be oneself.

She was by nature a hoarder. Her home was littered with souvenirs she picked up at markets, and gifts from travelling relatives: matryoshka dolls, jade pendants, amateur paintings, endless arrays of scented candles, idols, colourful bits of cloth, and cheap metal brooches. Contrasting with all this were piles of textbooks on biology, archaeology, computing, neurology, astronomy, structural mechanics, human anatomy, pure mathematics, molecular biology, and Keynesian economics, scattered across benches and counters in no discernible order; fiction, largely pulp romantic comedies or sci-fi adventures, and one horror novel she dared herself to read a few pages of every few weeks; and a wardrobe of dresses in every style, cut, and colour imaginable. This also contrasted with a few pieces of high-end technology, including a massage chair and a wide-screen TV linked to her PC, but not enough to label her a technophile; there was only a very modest sound system, her Internet connection was slow and tended to drop out, and she rode an underpowered budget electric scooter rather than a car, when she didn't just take public transport.

She had a flatmate, a vague, artsy type named Ami who seemed to have a 27-hour circadian rhythm, but Maya hadn't seen her in about two months. She would have assumed the other woman had fled the city following one Angel attack or another, probably the tenth, except her share of the rent kept coming in (frequently late), and their cupboards were still slowly accumulating exotic teas, which Maya never bought.

She stripped off her uniform and threw it onto a cabinet which also housed a print-out of a paper on applied myology, an unsolved Rubik's cube, and a spun glass sculpture of Maneki Neko, leaving herself in just her underwear. She headed to her fridge, poured herself a glass of the cheap sake her salary afforded, and went to her massage chair, but it was already occupied by a naked copy of herself. She set her sake down.

She stared at the doppelgänger for a full ten seconds, then wordlessly turned on her heel. She went to her bedroom and donned a sensible white-and-blue dress, then returned.

"Okay," she said aloud, "why is there a naked mannequin of me here?"

The second Maya turned to her and smiled. "Hi!"

"Who are you?"

"I'm Maya!"

"No. I'm Maya."

"I'm Maya!"

Maya frowned, leant forward, and took the copy's wrist. It was warm and had a pulse. She ran her hand over her face; it was firm but pliable, just like regular human skin, with no visible scars or other defects. So she wasn't a robot or someone with plastic surgery, unless it was a damned good surgeon.

"Why do you look like me?"

The other woman glanced down at herself and seemed to think hard for a long moment. Then she brightened and looked up.

"This is how Maya looks!"

Maya opened her mouth, shut it again, and pulled out her phone.

"Superintendent? Ibuki Maya here, I live in apartment 3-M. Yes. Yes. I was just wondering whether you'd given out any copies of my keys lately? Oh, no reason, just making sure, there was a security scare at work today. No, that's fine. Take care."

She looked back at her double, which was regarding her with interest.

"This is too surreal to be a kidnapping or identity theft," she decided. "No-one's been giggling about seeing naked pictures of me on the Internet, so probably no-one else has seen you. You don't seem smart enough to be good at hiding, so you're probably just a figment of my imagination."

"I'm Maya!" said the copy. Maya slapped a palm to her forehead.

…

"Oh, no. She's not coming."

"It's only ten minutes after you scheduled, Kensuke. Seriously, get a grip."

They were waiting in the food court of the local mall, and had been for the past quarter hour. Kensuke was slowly going insane, and taking Toji with him.

"Why would she not come at four when I said to come at four unless she's not coming?!"

Toji pinched the bridge of his nose. "Maybe because normal people don't take 'Let's meet up at maybe about four' as 'Come at four on the dot or I'll commit seppuku'. Look, worst comes to worst, we can just go to the arcade." He glanced over; Kensuke was still bouncing around in agitation. "Say, you're looking kind of clammy. Maybe you should wash your face before she gets here?"

Kensuke felt his face. "Oh no. I feel all slimy and disgusting. Aah!" And he ran off for the nearest bathroom.

Toji heaved a sigh and looked for other things that might possibly calm his friend down. Coffee was right out, he was pretty sure you weren't supposed to eat before a date in case the other person wanted to, and he couldn't think of any sedatives that you could buy over the counter. As he was thinking, Yuki wandered into sight, looking around.

"Hey!" he called, waving to her. "Yuki, right?"

She sized him up with an expression like someone at a good restaurant whose dessert has just arrived and looks even better than the photo on the menu. "Hey there. And I thought fake DPs were supposed to make people look better, not worse."

"Huh?" he said, colouring slightly. She had very piercing eyes, and showed just as many teeth in real life as online. The Class Rep was right: she did look like she bit. "I'm not Kensuke. I'm his friend, Toji."

"Rrreally? What, Kensuke wanted muscle in case I was a mugger?"

"I guess," Toji said. Yuki laughed; he laughed along with her, more out of sympathetic reaction than anything else.

"So, you have a girlfriend?"

…

Sakaki Tsuruko was the picture of young Japanese beauty: long, silky black hair, a slim figure, and a perfect face which had somehow entered puberty without any acne. She had been the prettiest girl in class other than Rei, who wasn't interested in playing the game anyway, until Asuka had arrived and usurped the position more from being exotic than being objectively better-looking. She therefore had the boldness of one used to getting her way with boys, and had done her level best to monopolise Kaworu's attention ever since school let out. He was gorgeous, after all. She even would have tried to compete with Asuka over him, had she been present, but fortunately the flashier girl had made it clear she wasn't interested.

Tsuruko took this as meaning she had full rights to do as she pleased, and had taken Kaworu's side while they visited the mall and bought a late lunch. There was no need to chase off the other girls; in fact it would be better to let them tag along, because none of them was brassy enough to do anything at all with witnesses, and this way they'd all see him accepting her claim.

"This is a really good location," Tsuruko said, as they walked the block from the tram stop. "I used to live in a flat more than a kilometre from the tram. It was such a hassle going out, you know?" As they walked, she deftly looped an arm through his, passing it off as a way to draw his attention and point out Kaworu's apartment. He was slim, but she could feel wiry muscles under his sleeve. "Is that the one?"

It was an upmarket area, comfortable without being lavish. "Yes," he said. "I'm only just getting settled; I'm afraid we don't have tea or really anything else to drink, and it's not decorated."

The other girls wilted: he had made no move to dislodge her arm. They had lost without any of them firing a shot. Hikari huffed, telling herself it was at the impropriety of a girl touching a boy she barely knew, in public. Kaworu led them into an elevator; it was cramped with so many people.

"I know!" Tsuruko said brightly. "Why don't we help you decorate? It takes a woman's touch to do something like that properly. We'll go shopping after school on Wednesday; that's only a half-day. And we can help you stock up on tea and things. Right, girls?"

"That'd be great!" said Sato Kinuko, Tsuruko's less-attractive but bubbly best friend.

Hikari frowned, aware that she was being outmanoeuvred but not sure how or what she could do about it. One thing she had in common with Asuka was that neither girl was particularly subtle.

"I'd like that," said Kaworu, "but I'll need to clear it with my guardian first. She's very strict." The elevator opened; he led them down a carpeted hall.

"Oh, come on," Tsuruko said, batting her eyelashes, "surely nobody would object to a welcome gift for a brave Eva pilot from the people he's going to protect. Horaki, couldn't you tell her that we did the same for Asuka and Ikari when they transferred in? She'd have to believe the Class Rep." She pronounced the capitals.

Hikari blinked. They had of course done no such thing, but she wasn't socially oblivious enough to point this out. "I can if you want, Nagisa?"

"We'll see," he said. He slipped his arm out of Tsuruko's, produced a key, and unlocked his apartment.

It was clean but spartan inside, with little furniture and no carpet. There was potential, though; it was large and airy, the pule blue wallpaper made it feel like it was open to the sky, there were wide windows, and the insulation kept the noise of Tokyo-3's interminable construction to a dull throb. A severe-looking woman in a business shirt and skirt sat at a desk, typing at a laptop; she didn't turn when Kaworu entered.

"Hello, Mrs Bauer," he said. "I've brought company."

She turned at last, minimising her work with a few keystrokes. "Oh, hello," she said in Japanese that obviously wasn't her first language, then switched to German. « Kaworu, what are you doing? Why have you brought civilians back here? You're supposed to be befriending the other pilots. »

« I'm working on that. These ones followed me. I think the tall one likes me. » "I'm sorry; she's not as comfortable with Japanese," he added to his girls.

« You're supposed to be a pilot and working for Seele, not running around chasing every skirt in the school. You haven't even been into the Geofront yet! »

« Of course I haven't. They don't have an Eva for me. If I went down there, they'd let me see the cafeteria and then tell me the tour was over. This way, I'm at least familiarised with the surface. »

« Your job isn't to find excuses for why you haven't done your job. »

« But what a job that would be. » "I'm sorry, but she's angry with me. I have paperwork I should have filled out by now, for the transfer and for Nerv, and she wants me to talk with the other pilots before we actually pilot together."

"Oh, all of them?" Tsuruko asked, with wide-eyed innocence. "Even Ayanami?"

"Why not?"

"Oh, it's nothing. I really shouldn't say. Well … I overheard her talking about you with Ikari, at recess. She was saying some really mean things about you, and he was saying she should act nicer to you, to at least pretend."

Hikari blinked. Rei was prettier than Tsuruko, would have more opportunities to talk to Kaworu, and now she had no chance with him. She was impressed.

She tried to hide her surprise, and did just well enough that Kaworu could pretend not to notice. He projected disappointment into his voice. "Really? That's a pity; I was hoping we'd be able to work together well. At least Ikari sounds nice."

"He is," Tsuruko said with a smile, "cute, too, but he's so quiet. Good luck with that. Well, I guess we'll see you tomorrow, then? In fact, this place is only a little bit out of my way; why don't I meet you at the corner at eighty twenty?"

"Sure!" he said. "Goodbye, everyone; thank you for showing me around the city today." Beaming, he shut the door. « What a bitch. »

…

Asuka and Shinji sat at the TV. Asuka had the remote and was flicking through channels; when she had first moved in, he had briefly thought they could take turns, but right now he didn't care either way.

"Do you ever think about how much better TV would be if pre-Impact soaps weren't so boring?"

Shinji nodded. "Yeah."

"Or if Misato paid for decent cable."

"Yeah."

"Or if I hadn't worn a shirt today."

"Yeah."

She kicked him, without putting her hips into it. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Yes!"

She kicked him again. "Liar. What's so important you think you can ignore me over it?"

"I don't …" Shinji rubbed his calf. "Asuka, what happened seven years ago?"

"I already told you that."

"You said they were moved to other facilities than yours. Like you were moved too. If they just wanted to split you up for safety, why would you need to move, too?"

She let out a huff, obviously not wanting to discuss the grey-haired boy, but she switched the TV off and rolled onto her side to face him properly. "Okay, so Nerv had this base in Berlin, right? Third Branch. It was a lot like HQ, but above ground, no Geofront there or anything. I lived on site for a while, in a dorm with Smarmy and this other girl. We had tutors instead of school, and had to do synch tests most days. About what you'd expect. This was back before they'd even designed the modern system; they weren't testing our synch scores, they were getting data to build the system." It therefore didn't count that Kaworu had frequently beaten her.

"They _h__ad_ a base?" repeated Shinji.

"Right. So, one day, something went wrong. Probably something to do with the prototype Eva they were trying to build there, I guess? This was before they had even started designing Unit-00, way more primitive than Unit-02, so they didn't know what they were doing. Whatever. There was one of those AT explosions, like at Matsushiro yesterday, and it blew half the city apart. I heard someone call it Little Third Impact, after.

"I was off-base at the time, visiting … somewhere, I don't remember … which was lucky, because everyone at ground zero was vaporised. Or so I thought. I didn't think anyone could possibly have survived an explosion like that; even the outlying suburbs were on fire days later."

"Haven't we all blown up … at least twice each?" said Shinji, ticking the third, sixth, seventh, tenth, and eleventh Angels off on his fingers. "If you count that N2 mine from the other night, I'm on five."

"We were in Evas at the time, idiot. He wasn't. He should've been turned to atoms. Smarmy, greasy atoms." She clicked the TV on, surfed through three channels, and turned it off again. "There's nothing good on, and the log's just full of unfunny sitcoms. Shinji, do something fun."

"Um, what?" he asked, his mind leaping back to what she'd said about her shirt. He tried to quash it.

"You're a boy, aren't you?"

He sputtered. "What's that got to do with anything?" he asked, wrenching his eyes up to meet hers again.

"How do you expect to get a girlfriend if you spend your Fridays sitting around like a loser?" she asked. "You don't go out shopping or play sports. So, what?"

"But you're not doing anything either."

"Strike one."

"Um. We could … start our homework?"

"Strike two," she said menacingly.

He cast around, trying to look anywhere but at her breasts. "We still have those DDR mats from when we were training for the seventh Angel. We could –"

"Didn't we swear never to speak of those again?"

"Er," said Shinji. He thought they'd only sworn never to mention the matching leotards Misato had made them wear. He'd actually quite liked the mats; their dance routine was difficult enough to fill his entire mind and make him forget about everything, without involving excruciating physical pain like battles generally did. "I could play you something on my cello? I guess? If you promise not to laugh?"

Asuka turned to him, with something approximating a modicum of respect in her eyes. "You have a cello? I didn't figure you for the musical type. How has this never come up before?"

"My teacher made me learn when I was little, but I haven't felt like practising since I got here."

"So, you don't really like it."

"Mm … no, I do. It's relaxing."

She tried to wrap her head around the notion of liking something but never doing it, without success. "Are you any good?"

"Um. Sort of? I don't have much natural talent, but I have been doing it for nine years, so …"

He trailed off. She held his gaze for long moments.

"Well?"

He started. "Um. Well what?"

"Why are you still here, and not getting your cello to serenade me?"

He pulled away from her hypnotic gaze and scurried to his little room, flushed and trying to think of anything else. He kept his cello in the spare wardrobe; he'd tried leaving it out after his old teacher had it freighted to Tokyo-3, but then he felt too guilty about not practising. He took it back to the living room and sat down; Asuka examined the instrument closely but kept her judgement to herself. He played a few notes and tuned it; she nodded approval of his ear.

"… Well?" she asked, after he hesitated for a moment too long.

"I've never played for anyone before," he said.

"So? Just do it. It'll be like I'm not even here."

"I can't."

"Shinji, you're being a coward again."

"I can't!"

"What was even the point of bringing it up if you're not going to play it? I bet you can't play at all. You just keep it in your room so you can bring it out and impress innocent, gullible young girls."

"I can too!"

"Doesn't sound like it."

"Well, what do you want me to play?"

She bit back her first response of 'whatever'. "Well, when in doubt, you should always pick one of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven. I don't really like Mozart. Bach then. Air on the G string?"

"That's not arranged for cello."

"Third!"

He began.

The transposed notes came unevenly, with semitone mistakes and uncontrolled dynamics, but unmistakably Air. Asuka gave a superior little smile that he didn't see. As the piece progressed, Shinji relaxed, forgetting about his audience and remembering how to play properly; his phrasing smoothed out, the mistakes dwindled and vanished altogether, and the dynamics began flowing. Asuka's eyes shut, her face smoothed over, and she appeared to fall asleep, spellbound. In her mind's eye, she saw a couple, a handsome young man and a beautiful woman in a crinoline, dancing around a ballroom; there was a dreamlike quality and she couldn't see either of their faces, except that both were smiling.

She gave a brief round of applause when he finished. "Not bad at all, Third. We should do a duet sometime. See if I can't teach you a thing or two."

"You play?" he asked. "What?"

"Guess."

He thought. "It's not singing. I've never heard you sing in the shower, and I've heard you and the class rep talking about how much you both hate karaoke." Also, privately, he couldn't imagine her having a particularly sweet singing voice; he'd heard her swearing in guttural German too many times for that.

"No, I don't sing," Asuka agreed.

"Woodwind?" He tried to picture it. "No. Not brass, either. Drums … I could see you having fun playing them, but you wouldn't be bragging about it to me if it was that. Real musicians are never impressed by drummers. Guitar? That feels closer, but that'd be more Misato than you. So something stringed. Violin."

She poked out her tongue. "And you were doing so well. Not violin."

He thought for a moment. "Oh. Piano."

In hindsight, it was obvious. A single instrument spanning seven octaves, where one musician could be an entire band and carry three or even four parts at once. An orchestra might have many violins, but only one piano. That had Asuka written all over it.

"They said at Nerv-Berlin that it might help with synchronising," she said, nodding. "Back then, they didn't really know how to do it – it wasn't like today, when any idiot can just hop in an entry plug – they made us try a bunch of things like that."

She didn't add that Kaworu had been better than her at music – entirely through natural ability, of course – and that she'd spent every spare hour of the day practising just to beat him.

"I think there's a piano in the music room at school," Shinji said. "I'll ask Misato to give us a lift on Monday so I can take my cello."

"Where is Misato, anyway?" Asuka asked, licking her lips.

"I don't know; I thought she'd be home by now," Shinji said.

Asuka scowled. "Well, then play me something else. I can't imagine what's taking _her_ so long."

…

Misato giggled and pulled Kaji into the alleyway behind their bar. He followed gamely; she seized him by the tie, pushed him against a wall, and kissed him. His hands wrapped around the small of her back; hers unbuttoned his shirt and slid up his chest.

"Mm …"

The distribution of the weight he was carrying shifted by about a kilo, and he felt a cool ring of metal pressed against his jaw, out of sight of anyone watching.

"Let's chat," Misato smiled.

"You have my undivided attention," Kaji said amiably.

"So, normally I think it's fair to say I'm pretty focused during battles," she said. "Eyes on the prize and all that. But I do spare some attention for my surroundings. One thing is that you're usually pretty interested in watching."

"Who wouldn't be?" he asked.

"Shinji. And no-one else on Earth," she agreed. "Let's see. You were on the bridge when we fought the seventh."

"I was particularly invested in that. It was my plan, after all. And I missed the eighth and ninth."

She scowled. "I remember. But I know you were sniffing around when we fought the tenth, and during the … glitch with the Magi, and again with the twelfth. But you were nowhere to be found when the eleventh attacked. Where were you?"

"Catching up on my beauty sleep. I'm not on call 24/7, and it was during the early hours."

"You may be completely irresponsible and never do any work of any description, ever," said Misato, "but no-one would miss potentially the end of the world because they felt like sleeping in."

"I have faith in your abilities," Kaji smiled. "Don't you?"

There came a gentle click from around his sternum.

"Be careful," he said. "Like they say, if the safety's off, never point a gun at anything you wouldn't want to see destroyed."

"I'm not," she said. "And your heretofore-unseen fidelity aside, I think that at least one of your masters is very interested in how Central Dogma operates during a crisis. That would explain why you skipped the fight with the eighth: we weren't operating from there anyway. And as for the ninth …"

"I seem to recall spending that in an elevator with you," he said.

"Which was odd, because we both know that one of your masters was responsible for that blackout, so you should have been ready for it. Using it as an excuse to grope me – while in character – would be so unprofessional that I would have discounted it … if I hadn't found this in Central Dogma afterwards."

She pulled from her pocket a tiny wireless bug.

"And you think I put that there?" Kaji asked, finally losing his smile.

"If I could prove it, would I have bothered telling you all this, or would I have just shot you?" she asked. "I kept Central Dogma locked down for three days after the battle with the eleventh, and definitely not the twelfth, Angel, to look for more of these. And I didn't find any.

"Now I know that you know that we refine our processes over time. Ritsuko writes Magi subroutines, Hyuga adds to the technicians' checklists, I recommend different weapons configurations for the Evas. We do this whenever we notice any room for improvement, and especially after every battle. If you want your information to be current, you need to keep up with all of that. But you didn't even try. So I think you weren't in HQ at all at the time.

"I also remember that the Commander just so happened to be out of the country during the battle. So I'm thinking, what if this wasn't a coincidence? What if you were there with him?"

"What if I was? I thought your grudge was against the Angels, not Seele. They do pay your wages, you know."

"Nerv is a military organisation, and like any military, it runs on trust. Nerv exists to defeat the Angels. I can trust that. Seele is … opaque. I don't know what it wants. You don't know, or you're not telling, or I wouldn't believe you anyway."

"Seele wants the Angels defeated too," he said.

"They don't want to all die, imagine that. I don't know what _else_ they want."

Kaji was silent.

"Whatever it is, I can't trust them. That means I can't trust _you_. When the Operational Director doesn't trust someone, he winds up dead."

"I don't think you're going to shoot me."

"Tonight? No." She clicked the safety back on and put his gun back in its holster inside his jacket. "But I sent my adoptive son on a suicide mission with an N2 mine less than a week ago, and I dunked my adoptive daughter in molten lava. I love them, and consider them vital to my mission. Don't tell me what I won't do."

She straightened her jacket, turned, and left.


	4. Zadkiel

"_This is Ecta 6-4 calling Neopan 4-0-0. Confirm cumulonimbus clouds in your immediate flightpath, over."_

Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki stood on a balcony at the Ashitaka base, watching as the Eva-laden transport plane began its descent toward the extremely long runway. It was nominally a forward command post, for in case an Angel attacked from the Suruga Bay rather than Sagami like most had, but they'd hastily repurposed it as a testing facility after Matsushiro was destroyed. The Eva was arriving well ahead of schedule, and she'd have to cancel Misato's promise of a weekend off to get it activated; she wasn't willing to do that yet, though, not when she still had her own concerns about the Fourth Child.

"That was mean," Fuyutsuki opened.

"Mm-hmm," said Ritsuko.

"Is the same thing going to happen here?" he asked.

"No. Or if it does, it won't be my fault. The Fourth is obviously with Seele, and we both know they can never let things just work."

"They do get us our funding," he pointed out.

"The ninth Angel," Ritsuko succinctly replied. "If Asuka hadn't managed to neutralise its AT Field, the Evas would have run out of power without destroying it, we couldn't have recharged them, and we'd all be LCL right now. Seele may do some good, but … have you ever heard the story of the frog and the scorpion?"

"I have. Will you put the Fourth into Unit-03?"

"Do I have a choice? Not only has the Commander ordered it, but we're barely holding out against the Angels as is. We need to continue expanding our firepower."

Fuyutsuki made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat.

"And what about you, Subcommander? Have you made any progress with dealing with our so-called benefactors?"

"I haven't found an opening yet. They're slippery."

"True."

She lit a cigarette as the massive American transport plane touched down on the runway.

…

Makoto rang the bell for the first apartment on his list. He wasn't too sure about the location; there was heavy construction going on across three of the four adjoining city blocks, and the noise of drilling and jackhammers was quickly becoming unbearable.

Nobody answered.

He tried ringing again, and again, nothing happened. He shrugged and tried it: unlocked.

Inside was an old lady sitting on a rocking chair, reading a novel. She looked up as he arrived.

"Oh, you must be Mr Hyuga!" she shouted. "You should have rung."

"I tried!" he shouted back. "You mustn't have heard over the noise!"

"The bell's beside the doorknob! Come now, let me show you around!" She got up and led him to the elevator.

"Is it always this noisy?!" he asked.

"Yes, it's lovely, isn't it, dear!" she replied.

He raised an eyebrow.

They got off at the fourth floor, and she hobbled along to show him an empty apartment. It was quite nice in and of itself, with everything he could possibly ask for, except for industrial-grade insulation and, ideally, active noise cancellation.

"Do they ever stop?!"

She nodded and smiled. "You'll have to speak up, Mr Hyuga, I'm quite deaf!"

"Of course you are," he muttered. "The construction crews! Do they ever stop?!"

"Yes, of course! The union would never let one shift work twenty-four hours a day!"

"Okay. Thanks!" He forced a smile. "I promised I'd visit some other places today, but I'll call you back!"

…

Rei walked, a shopping bag in either hand. Her expression was perfectly neutral; even Ikari Gendo wouldn't have realised what was going on inside her mind.

_I want._

For so much of her life, things had been simple. There were rules, mostly low-level ones like 'brush your teeth before going to sleep' but a few higher-level ones, such as the one that Ikari Gendo referred to as her zeroeth rule, 'always act in accordance with the Scenario'. When given a choice, she took the option dictated by the rules. If this wasn't clear, the rule was that she would seek clarification. At no point did wants enter into consideration.

At the time, she had believed that this was because wanting things was superfluous; there were no rules for them and they generally were contrary to the zeroeth rule. Now, though, she wanted things – lots of things – and even though she understood that they were at odds with the Scenario, she couldn't not want them. She couldn't even bring herself to feel bad about it.

One of her shopping bags contained a week's servings of her usual ramen and microwave dinners, but the other had two ears of corn, a tomato, three shishito, and a potato, which she had selected more or less at random from the local supermarket's vegetable section.

If she continued to want things beyond what Ikari had ordered her to do, and if she continued to act to acquire them, she would be explicitly disobeying him, the man who was responsible for her life. This was almost conceptually unthinkable. She was his instrument, or perhaps vessel; if she didn't act to further his ends, she had no reason for being. It was almost unthinkable, but not quite.

He had never suggested that there might be a middle ground; her rules-based mindset didn't allow for shades of grey, only for performance or dereliction of duty. If she chose to do other than obey, she was worthless; and yet she knew that she would, regardless of the consequences. It was a strange concept; like standing on train lines and seeing approaching headlights, and knowing that one would be unwilling to step out of the way. A kind of philosophical suicide, perhaps.

She stopped short and snapped out of her reverie: her apartment door was already open.

A pair of shoes not her own sat just inside. She stared for long moments. They were running shoes, larger than hers, belonging to either a boy or a very lanky girl. They were made of cheap pink plastic, scratched and spattered with mud, but were lined up neatly, whereas she generally let her shoes lie where they fell.

She proceeded. On her bed was the intruder, a tall, skinny girl in a yellow shirt and blue skirt, lying on her front with her legs idly kicking the air. She had an old bandage crusted with Rei's blood in one hand and a bottle of Rei's medication in the other, and was apparently reading its ingredient list with deep fascination. A brown satchel lay at her side. At Rei's approach, she looked up and with a smile and brilliant green eyes, without setting down the bottle.

"Hello, Ayanami Rei," she said. "I've waited a long time to meet you."

Rei paused for a long moment. "I see," she said, then went to her kitchen to set down her bags. She returned. "Who are you?"

"I'm Mogami Chitose," said the girl. "I'm the Fifth Child."

Rei considered this, then walked to the door, slipped on her shoes, and left the apartment.

…

Maya carried two bags full of psychiatry books from the library into her apartment. The idiotic double was still sitting where she'd left it/her, in her wardrobe, in case someone came over and she couldn't think of a good excuse to get rid of them. She set down the bags, and took out the first lead, Capgras' 1923 paper on 'the illusion of look-alikes'.

…

Chitose followed her, of course, keeping up easily with her long stride, her head twisting from side to side with each step. Rei had the impression she had never seen a city before; Shinji had been similarly impressed when he first arrived at the Geofront, although he was more subdued. Chitose had the air of fearlessness of someone who had drunk too much; unlike most girls, she met the gazes of a few workmen who wolf-whistled as they passed, before her head turned to follow their cranes and other equipment.

"What's piloting like?" she asked.

"It is," Rei said.

She considered how to do such a question justice and whether she needed to answer it at all.

"Could you give me some adjectives, maybe?" Chitose suggested.

"Comforting," said Rei.

"That's nice to hear. But is that including when you get hurt? I know that Evas give sympathetic pain to pilots. Or do you not get damaged much? You've been piloting the longest, so maybe you're the most experienced and best at survival?"

Rei rather doubted this, and it occurred to her that she wished it were otherwise, that she wanted to survive. Previously, this was because she would be unable to fulfil the Scenario if dead or too wounded; but now she wanted to survive in and of itself, even past the Scenario, impossible though it was. Of course, it was unlikely to matter, because as far as she knew she was permanently grounded.

"Ayanami Rei – may I call you just Rei, or even just Ayanami? Five or six syllables is pretty long for something I'll need to say a lot. Or would that be ambiguous? Are there many other people called Rei or Ayanami in Tokyo-3? I don't mind if you call me just Mogami or Chitose. Or both, if you'd like. Do many people around here mind?"

Rei had been taught to address people by their surname, and to expect the same formality, but it now occurred to her that Ikari Shinji and Soryu did otherwise, as did Major Katsuragi, and this didn't seem to cause them any problems. The rules were clear about this, though. She could overlook the informality if others did it, but it would feel too odd to do it herself. "Not all," she said.

Chitose's smile brightened for a moment. "You must know a lot of people. Who else will I meet, working at Nerv? I had the impression it was quite a large organisation?"

"You would meet the other Children and our handlers," Rei said.

"Is one of them your boyfriend?" Chitose asked.

Rei took a sharp intake of air, and cast her a sideways look, her equivalent of dropping her jaw.

"Girls usually like having boyfriends," Chitose explained, looking absurdly pleased with herself. "They like spending time with them, so you'd probably prefer one who was also a pilot. Am I right?"

Rei resumed looking directly forward. "No."

"Oh." Chitose thought about it for a moment. "Do you not want a boyfriend?"

Rei said nothing.

"I'm pretty sure the Third Child is a boy," Chitose mused. "And the Fourth, obviously, but I know he isn't your boyfriend. Is this Nerv?" Rei had just turned into an apartment block.

They crossed the foyer to the elevators, and took one up to the second storey. Rei walked past a few doors, then pressed a bell.

Shinji opened the door. "Oh, Ayanami! Hello. And … um …"

"I'm Mogami Chitose," she said brightly. "You must be Ikari Shinji, right? I've seen your photo. May I call you Shinji? It's fewer syllables and less likely to be confused with Ikari Gendo."

"Um," said Shinji. "Okay?" It wasn't really, but he was too surprised to refuse.

"Is Major Katsuragi in?" Rei asked Shinji.

"I think she's just finishing a shower," he said. "Are you two friends?"

Rei had to think about this, as she wasn't an expert on friendship, but Chitose beat her to it. "Yes! And we're flatmates, too."

Rei gave her a glance of 'We are?', but said nothing and proceeded to the bathroom.

"Is this Nerv HQ?" Chitose asked, stepping out of her shoes and looking around. "I wouldn't have thought you could fit an Eva here."

"Huh? No, this is just Misato's apartment. HQ is underground."

"Really? Why don't you live there?"

"I …" This was the most personal questions anyone had ever asked Shinji at a time before. "Misato offered to take me in; this is her apartment."

"Okay. But why doesn't she live there? I mean, surely you should live near your Eva, so you can get to it quickly when an Angel appears?"

Shinji shrugged. "Well, it's not like we need to launch within a few minutes of spotting one. And I guess she likes living above ground? There's not really much of a city down there. I think it's mostly restricted access, except for work. It'd be pretty inconvenient the rest of the time for me, because school's above ground."

"Hmm … why don't they put the entire city in the Geofront, then? Isn't that the point of a Geofront? Oh, unless lots of people like living above ground? The sun is pretty neat," she added, glancing back at the still-open door.

"You're not from around here, are you," Shinji said.

The bathroom door slid open, and out walked Misato, fixing the top button of her blouse and towelling her hair, Rei in tow.

"Hello," Misato said. "Rei said something about a Fifth Child?"

"Wait, you're the Fifth?" Shinji said, eyes widening. "So soon after the Fourth?"

"Yes!" Chitose beamed. "Oh, well, I suppose technically I might not be, because the Marduk Institute gets to decide about the numbering system, but I am an Angel hunter. Or, I can be. Are you in charge? I'm Mogami Chitose."

"I am," Misato said noncommittally.

She gave the girl a once-over. Her clothing was mismatched, her hair scruffy and unwashed, and there was mud at the ankles of her stockings. Her bag looked incongruously new. She had a Japanese name, but the accent and manners of someone who learnt it as a second language, and Misato would have pegged her as half-Chinese, half-Caucasian. Her hair was the dark brown that was the best dye could do to black hair without bleaching it first.

"I didn't hear anything about that from the Marduk Institute," Misato said. "Or the higher-ups at Nerv. Or anyone."

"No, they probably didn't realise I was coming," Chitose said, her smile unwavering.

"Do you have any paperwork?"

"No."

"You must have a handler?"

Chitose considered this. "Not any more. There was an accident. Don't worry about me; I can look after myself. Especially with Rei's help! I'm actually quite looking forward to it."

There was a pause, while Misato waited for her to elaborate on the nature of this accident, but elaboration was not forthcoming.

"Uh-huh. Do you have ID?"

"Maybe? What does it stand for, in this context?"

"Rei, could I have a word," Misato ordered, and pulled her back into the bathroom. "Is there any reason you don't think she's either crazy or a homeless girl hoping for a few meals?"

Rei paused. That had honestly not occurred to her.

Misato sighed. "Right. If you meet anyone else like this, call social services. I feel sorry for her, but I don't have the resources to take in every stray in the city, understand? They'll take care of her."

"Yes, Major."

She slid the door back open.

Asuka chose that moment to leave the TV and investigate. "Are you stupid? Invite them inside, or at least oh _God_ no."

"Asuka-chan!" Chitose exclaimed, delighted. She ran up and hugged Asuka, who went rigid. "I missed you so much! How have you been!" She blinked. "Oh! Are you and Shinji married?"

There was a pause.

"No!" Shinji and Asuka shouted in unison, both turning bright red.

Asuka threw Chitose's arms off. "God, no! Why would you even _think_ that? No!"

"Because he's not Rei's boyfriend," Chitose explained. "And you're living together. You're pilots, so you must spend lots of time together. It would be very convenient for you if you were married. And you're both very beautiful."

Shinji frowned. He'd been called beautiful more than once before, but never handsome.

"That is," Asuka began, "the stupidest – I don't – you – that doesn't even –"

"Well, I suppose you might just be boyfriend and girlfriend," Chitose mused.

"You two know each other?" Misato interrupted.

"Yes, God help me," Asuka said. "She was the third pilot candidate at Nerv-Germany."

"Huh," said Misato. "Give me a moment."

She ducked back into the bathroom and took out her phone. "Ritz? Rei's just turned up with a strange girl who's claiming to be the Fifth Child. Emphasis on the strange."

"More or less so than Rei?"

"Mm … about the same, but in a different way."

"Well, I haven't heard anything about a Fifth," said Ritsuko, holding her phone with her shoulder so she could continue to type with both hands. "I'd think she's probably just a civilian who thinks it sounds glamorous."

"That's what I thought, but Asuka says she knows her from Germany."

"She does? Well … I _was_ feeling nervous about letting the Fourth into Unit-03 … send her into HQ. I'll have Maya do a basic synch scan to check whether she's a viable candidate."

"Are you sure? She has no papers, no handler, nothing, and I don't think she'd pass the Turing test."

"That won't matter for the scans, and even if it did, Nerv already isn't exactly the poster organisation for good mental health. In all seriousness, I honestly wouldn't care if she's homeless or a little bit crazy, if she can make Eva move. If she can, she's usable. And if Asuka thinks so, well, I'd rather waste an hour on a pointless test than risk having to clean up another Matsushiro." And, more importantly, she wouldn't trust Nagisa as far as she could throw Unit-03.

"Well, you're the expert. If you think she's worth it, I'll take her in to Nerv now."

"Thanks, Misato."

"Shall I tell the Commander?"

"No, leave dealing with him to me," said Ritsuko. She hung up. "Fuyutsuki? How would you feel about me owing you a favour?"

Misato opened the door to see Asuka chewing Chitose out. "And how did you survive Berlin? Smarmy hasn't said anything."

"Are you still calling him that?" Chitose asked. "You know his name's Nagisa Kaworu, don't you?"

"Yes, but I'm not going to call him that until he starts being _normal_. I haven't got my hopes up."

"I always admired how persistent you were," Chitose said. "I've never been able to get in the habit of calling people nicknames. I just forget about it, every time. Although there's one that I'm trying to, just to be nice, because he has a sweet one for me, so I remember whenever he says it."

"Mogami?" Misato said, a little more nicely this time. "I just got word from the head of Project E. She wants me to take you in for a preliminary scan. If it goes well, you could be cleared for activation soon."

"Really?" Chitose said enthusiastically.

"Really?" Asuka said despairingly.

Chitose followed Misato out of the apartment.

"Are _all_ the oddballs from Third Branch going to show up?" Asuka asked rhetorically. "Maybe my old ballet instructor?"

"You do ballet?" Shinji asked, deciding not to point out that Chitose had flattered her way out of Asuka's question.

"I did. They made us try lots of things when they were still figuring out synchronisation." Asuka rounded on Rei. "Well?"

Rei had never fit in with large groups. Even being in 2-A's classroom made her uneasy. Being in groups of only two were worse; she had an unpleasant memory of riding an elevator with another girl once, and standing in total silence for over a minute, all the while feeling as though she should be saying something because people say things to each other, but not knowing any rules to guide her in what to say. A group of three, though, was surprisingly pleasant. It was intimate enough that she could feel a part of it and had enough other people to banish long silences.

"I have never studied ballet," she said.

"That's not – ugh, never mind. It's my own fault for saying it like that. Why did you bring her over here?"

"Because she asked."

Asuka massaged her temple. "Why _you specifically._"

"She has decided she will be my flatmate," Rei said.

"'She' has decided? What about what you want?"

Rei thought for a moment. Chitose was … unexpected, but not obviously a problem. "It is fine."

Asuka narrowed her eyes. "Fine? You mean you were _ordered_."

"I was not ordered to share my flat with her," Rei said. Nor was she consulted, but still.

Asuka rolled her eyes. "Well, we have to finish that essay for Tuesday," she said. Shinji opened his mouth to point out that that wasn't exactly what she'd been doing; she swept over him. "You can stay, First, but it'll be really boring."

Rei looked from her to Shinji. She should probably head home and reread an operations manual. "Thank you," she said instead.

"Have you had lunch?" Shinji asked. "I'll put some rice on."

Asuka tossed her hair ostentatiously and returned to the living room. Rei followed.

…

Makoto breathed through his mouth, as shallowly as he could. There was an overpowering aroma in the air, and he didn't think it wise to agree to buy anything while under its influence. A lanky man in his twenties was showing him around the second apartment on his list.

The guide slid open a door, and a wall of smoke poured out. "This's the bathroom," he said. "Shower, bath, sink, you know. Toilet's over there."

Makoto coughed and squinted. There was another man in the bathtub, apparently asleep, holding a hand-rolled cigarette that didn't contain tobacco. "Why isn't the smoke alarm going off?" he asked.

"Huh? Oh, that thing that kept waking us up whenever anyone lit up? We took the batteries out, it's way better now. Kitchen's through here …"

"Oh, look at the time," said Makoto. "I'm late for a dentist's appointment. I'll call you later, okay?"

"Sure," said the guide, waving him off. "That was quick."

…

Maya met Misato at the trans-Geofront monorail depot.

"Should I come down with you?" Misato asked.

Maya brushed this off. "I've ridden it a thousand times before. And it's not like Mogami-chan is going to run off, is it?" She smiled at the girl, who was actually a few centimetres taller than her.

"Would anyone?" Chitose asked. "I mean, you won't let me pilot until I'm scanned, will you?"

Misato accepted this reluctantly, and waved them off. Chitose oohed at the Geofront, and her head spun as Maya led her from the tram to the station, then into the great pyramid of HQ, and down a labyrinthine series of passages. Chitose held her up at a vending machine.

"I haven't eaten yet today," she explained. She pulled a fat leather wallet from her bag, and removed a wad of cash. She searched around for a note small enough to buy an energy bar.

"Mogami … how much money is that?" Maya squeaked.

"Um, let me see … I kept losing track when I was counting it, and I can't remember how much I've spent, but I'm pretty sure it's a bit over a hundred thousand yen?" Chitose guessed, munching happily on her bar. "I put all the smaller notes into this one."

Maya blinked. "The … smaller notes?"

"Only the ones a thousand yen and lower. I put the larger ones in a second wallet. I thought it would be more organised if I split my money up that way."

Maya did some mental arithmetic. Assume the other wallet was equally full, and that its average denomination was ten times as high. That gave the girl upward of one point one million yen in cash, close to two months of her wages.

"And you're just … carrying it all on you."

"I wouldn't be able to spend it if I didn't," Chitose explained. "Why? Do people not usually do that?"

"Well, um." Someone might, if they had – for example – just robbed a bank, or been paid in unmarked bills for a large drug sale. "A debit card is more convenient, and you won't lose all your money if you forget it."

"I see. I'll get that, then. How do I do that?"

"I'll take you to a bank after the test," Maya said, glad that most companies in Tokyo-3 looked the other way whenever a senior Nerv employee did anything obviously illegal. "It's just a bit past here."

They turned the corner and saw an unshaven man sitting at a bench, reading a newspaper. He looked up and caught Maya's eye as she approached.

"Miss Ibuki," he said, nodding respectfully.

"Mister Kaji," she replied. "I didn't know you worked weekends." In fact, she wasn't aware that he worked at all; he seemed to do precious little but drink coffee and hit on the interns.

"Oh, I don't. But if I'm not working, I figure I might as well do it somewhere climate-controlled." His gaze fell on Chitose. "You must be Miss Mogami."

All of a sudden, the energy in the room changed. It was as though someone had turned on a high-powered Van de Graaff generator, and there was a static charge building. Maya felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise.

"I don't think we've met before, Mister Kaji," Chitose said, speaking very slowly and clearly, half an octave lower than usual. Her habitual benign smile vanished; her face went completely blank.

"I heard about you from office gossip," Kaji said. His easy smile was still there, but it looked just a little bit fixed. "You'd be surprised how much of it there is for how secretive Nerv tries to be."

"I see," said Chitose. "Is there going to be a problem?"

The electric charge crescendoed.

Kaji shrugged. "No problem. Actually, I was just about to go for a walk. I'll see you both around." He folded his paper under his arm, got to his feet, and walked past them. Chitose followed his progress, until he vanished around a corner.

"That was … awfully fast for gossip," Maya frowned.

"Well!" said Chitose, even more brightly than before, "I suppose that means we should hurry, before everyone finds out and it's not a surprise any more!"

Maya would have probed into this, but she was on the clock, so they continued down the corridor, into the old synch test room. Before they started, she stretched and worked out a kink in her neck. She respected Doctor Akagi's opinion on many things, but the woman was an incurable workaholic and had no respect for Sundays.

The room was full of mostly custom-built machinery that looked like it was straight out of a sci-fi movie, although much of it was dusty from disuse. The room had been partly used as a storage cupboard by lazy maintenance crews, so there were also spare parts, tins of paint, and a trolley still laden with objects obscured by sealed plastic bags.

She quickly swept the dust off an operating table and set a white sheet over it. "Please put these on and lie down," offering a set of what looked like A-10 connectors, which were attached by a lead to a large, clunky machine. She plugged her laptop into the machine with a USB jack.

Chitose took the connectors, clumsily fastened them against her scalp, and lay down on the table. "What's this do? I mean, more specifically than showing I can pilot."

It technically didn't prove that at all; the only thing that could determine that for sure was to stick her in an entry plug and see what happened. The idea was a cheap preliminary test which would weed out the majority of completely unsuitable would-be pilots without risking another berserker incident or AT explosion, but there was no guarantee against false positives.

"It scans your brain's topographical connections with your CNS," Maya sort-of explained instead, typing as she talked. "When you synchronise with Eva, for it to work effectively, your nervous system needs to be shaped the same way as Eva's. Look at the colours, please." She entered commands into the scan program, and a video projector shone a kaleidoscopic movie onto the white ceiling, a swirling rainbow rapidly fluctuating in hue, intensity, and chroma.

"Ooh."

"Human brains aren't all identical; different people have different numbers of neurons and different synaptic topologies, so we need to make sure there aren't any problems from that. Luckily, all human brains are connected to the rest of the nervous system in very similar ways, so that simplifies things a lot, but brains are still complicated things internally."

"What do the lights mean?"

"Nothing, they're pseudorandom, but they statistically resemble some of the neural noise caused by synchronisation. You see something like that whenever we activate your Eva, although that's heard directly by your brain, and this goes through your optic nerve. The tests need to see how your brain behaves under standard synchro conditions."

"I don't remember doing this in Berlin."

"If you were selected with Asuka, that would've been … nine years ago? This system was only developed six years ago. It was mostly tested in-house with Rei. This was before I joined Nerv. We don't share technology with the other branches anywhere near enough; Berlin probably never would have got it anyway." She watched the stream of data flow past. She twisted a dial to bias the random number generator and noted how Chitose's neurograph shifted; all within tolerances. "Well, this is all looking good so far."

"Is there any way it wouldn't? I mean, I was a candidate; they wouldn't have let me do that if I wouldn't actually be able to pilot. Unless the Evas are different to how they thought they'd be, back then? But if that were the case, Asuka shouldn't be able to pilot. Or Kaworu. Do you know why the Eva went berserk for him?"

"There are lots of reasons why. It might just be Unit-00. It went berserk for Rei, too, the first time."

"Has anyone else tried it?"

"No, just those two. It's the most temperamental, and the Marduk Institute isn't really interested in looking for spare pilots for it anyway, since it's weaker than the others. If you're cleared, you'll be assigned to Unit-03. Maybe we'll try to put Kaworu into Unit-00 again."

"That's the one made with mostly Lilith, isn't it? Don't bother. It won't work, no matter how many times you try."

Maya did a double-take.

"Are you still recording?"

"Oh?" She twisted the dial the other way. "How do you know about that?"

"Hm? Oh. The reason Kaworu can pilot is he has a sort of … neural override, but it can only interface with the later models. He can do Unit-03 onward, I think Unit-02, and maybe Unit-01, but Unit-00 doesn't have the interface at all. He'll never be able to synchronise with it."

She'd meant, how did Chitose know about Lilith, but this was more interesting. "Could you?"

"I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I could use any of the other Evas. But you must have designed Unit-00 to synch with Rei specifically, right? I mean, you only finished Unit-00 a few months before the third Angel arrived, so you were probably rushing and using every trick you could think of, so you could have a working Eva to give trial data for Unit-01. But Rei's special, isn't she? Anything custom-built for her won't work for me."

"I don't know about it. I was never involved in building the Evas."

"No, that was Dr Akagi, wasn't it? I think I'd like to talk to her. She sounds interesting."

"She is. She's my mentor."

"Really? Could you get me an appointment with her?"

"Maybe. She's very busy. I could try."

"Please do." Chitose thought for a moment. "Hang on. If you want Kaworu to be a reserve, you'd prefer him to be a reserve for Unit-03, because it's stronger. Isn't anyone at all using Unit-00? Why not? Is it broken?"

"No, we just finished repairs, but the Commander ordered it mothballed. I don't understand why, either; it does work, just not as well as the others. He is … sometimes sort of affectionate toward Rei, so maybe he wants to protect her?"

"What did he say when you asked?"

Maya blinked. "Asked? Oh, wow. You've definitely never met the Commander, have you."

Chitose frowned and made to get up.

"Stay where you are, please," Maya said. She hit some more switches; a set of speakers began playing what sounded like a techno remix of whalesong, and there was a strong smell of blueberries and sake. She searched around for a moment, then found a duster and began brushing it against Chitose's knees; the girl giggled. "You're looking good. The machine still needs to gather data in the presence of more stimuli, just to be complete." She continued for a minute, and the machine beeped. "Okay, we're all done. This is all looks great. You can sit up; let me pop outside and tell my boss the good news."

She took a moment to thank whoever thought to build the elaborate network of telecoms relays that transmitted her signal to the surface and then from one of Nerv's terrestrial radio towers. It would have been a pain to have to take the monorail back to the surface to call her boss. "Senpai? I have the preliminary data from Mogami. She's perfect, technically."

"Technically?"

"In the sense that her technical specifications are all within desired parameters. Her chi-squared values are all excellent. But, psychologically, she's …"

"Neurotic? A wreck? Well, she won't have any trouble fitting in with the others, then."

"Senpai!"

"Tell me I'm wrong, Maya."

Maya shook her head. On top of the workaholism, she had a nagging feeling that her superior might be a clinical psychopath. "I wouldn't call her neurotic, but she's … I don't know what to call it. I'm not sure if modern psychiatry even has the vocabulary."

"Does Japanese?"

"It's not that she's unintelligent. She asks sensible questions, and makes good guesses. Really good guesses. She knows things about Eva which Makoto and Shigeru don't, and which I wouldn't if you hadn't personally told me because I'm your understudy. But she doesn't know what a debit card is. It's like she was born yesterday, and spent the time since reading classified dossiers on Nerv. I can't recommend her for piloting."

"Why not? You don't need a debit card to pilot."

"Senpai!"

"I sympathise with your concerns, Maya, but there are … issues with using the Fourth Child."

"With respect, Senpai, if issues are what you're worried about …"

"Yes, yes, I'm sure she's just as big a bundle of deep-rooted psychological trauma as the first three, but sometimes in science, the only way to find out whether a hive is full of honey or hornets is to put on your running shoes and poke it with a stick."

Ritsuko had been thinking about it more, and it seemed almost certain to annoy Seele, one way or another. Fast-tracking the girl would force them to reveal at least one card from their hand, even if through inaction. Besides, if worst came to worst, they could always just bump her later.

"I … will defer to your judgement, Senpai," said Maya, who didn't see how it could possibly be a good idea but who had learned not to doubt Dr Akagi.

"Thank you. And do me a favour and don't gossip about her? Not with Hyuga or Aoba, not Misato, and definitely not with Kaji. And make absolutely sure he's never alone with her."

"What's happened with Kaji? I ran into him on the way down. I don't think Mogami likes him."

"I'm just trying to avoid employee conflict," Ritsuko said. "Speaking of which, would you mind calling Asuka in? I want her on guard duty again."

"Er …"

"Thanks, Maya. I've got to go; I have another call." She transferred lines. "Kaji. Fancy hearing from you. And I expected today to be quiet."

"Good morning to you too. You've been talking with Maya, I take it?"

"Of course. I am her superior, after all. Are you going to tell me about Miss Mogami?"

"I can tell you that she's dangerous. Don't let her into Unit-03."

"I figured that one out on my own, Kaji, but thanks anyway," Ritsuko said, amused. "What am I supposed to do for its pilot, then? It's either her or Nagisa."

"She's more dangerous than him. I can't tell you why, but she is."

Ritsuko shut her eyes and thought. "If you know something about her that I don't, she has something to do with the Government or Seele. I'm going to take a blind shot in the dark and guess Seele. Nagisa is theirs, and they'd happily sabotage a better pilot if it would make us dependent on their cat's paw."

"If that's a sticking point, they might be able to lean on Marduk to find a Sixth Child. A neutral."

"_If_ they can find a sixth, we'll still have no guarantee that that one isn't a spy too, for Seele or anyone else, _and_ we'll have another pointless delay of two weeks at least, probably more like a month. By memory, Magi estimates about two chances in three of another attack before then. Besides, if the reason why she's dangerous were a problem for me or Nerv, they'd let you tell me why, because that would persuade me more certainly. Therefore, she's only a problem for Seele."

"I don't know why they think she's dangerous, but they wouldn't necessarily tell you. They're keeping plenty of other secrets from you."

"So, there's information which would make me change my mind and do what they want, but they're not telling me because they like being secretive just that much? Even if I believed that for a second, I'd ignore it just to teach them a lesson."

"Even if they are lying, they're still not going to let you keep her. They want her back."

Ritsuko made a mental note of his last word. "Then you can tell them that if they want us to do our job and stop Third Impact, they can start by not confiscating a third of our firepower. Good luck, Kaji." She hung up before he could respond.

Fuyutsuki was standing beside her. "So, Seele has a problem with this girl," he said.

"We don't know how or why, and they might even be bluffing, but if not, then she's a threat to their Scenario which probably doesn't risk Third Impact. Sounds like you have your opening, Fuyutsuki," Ritsuko observed.

"Call me Kozo," he said. "It would be … inconvenient if they suspected me of moving against them."

"Blame it all on me, if you like. They already hate me, and they can't get rid of me."

"Is that so?"

"Seele is full of mystics. I'm a scientist. We had an … interesting first meeting, and relations never really thawed. Besides, they probably suspect that my Scenario and theirs don't quite overlap, and also I maintain and helped design the giant sacrilegious abominations we use to kill God's messengers."

"I can see those being problems," Kozo agreed, exchanging smiles with the doctor.

…

Makoto stepped into the third apartment on his list. Every single surface was covered in bees.

"…" he said.

A woman in full apiarist netting bustled up behind him, carrying a smoke gun. "Oh, I'm so sorry! I run the bee farm downstairs. Don't worry, they're lovely really, they hardly ever sting. Usually they're so well-behaved – or more like bee-hived –" she chuckled "– and they don't escape very often at all."

His face perfectly neutral, Makoto turned around and walked away without a word.

…

"This is stupid. This is so stupid."

Ritsuko rubbed a temple. "Maya, could you shut her up for a minute?"

"Um, I don't think so. I'm the one who made her come in."

Fuyutsuki took the call. "Pilot Soryu, I would appreciate it if you tried not to stab the workers here."

She huffed. One time, and the old geezer would never let her live it down. It wasn't like she had even killed anyone, it was just a forklift.

She was again standing outside on guard duty, while the science team was inside, trying to synch the new pilot. For whatever reason, the scientists seemed much more confident of this one; Ritsuko was here in person this time, and she had good survival instincts, so it probably almost definitely wouldn't go wrong again. Asuka was still nervous, and kept shifting her weight from one leg to the other, much to the disquiet of the technicians nearest her.

Chitose's face appeared in her HUD, framed by her new A-10 connectors and yellow plugsuit. She was in the plug, awaiting insertion. "Asuka! This is so exciting!"

"You can just see I'm pumped," Asuka said.

"I know! We'll finally be together, saving the world from the Angels!"

"Oh, look, I've got another call," Asuka said, and cut Chitose's connection. "Ugh. I never thought I'd find myself missing having the Idiot for backup. Why did it have to be the Weird Girl? Why are there no normal pilots except me?"

"I'm not touching that one," Ritsuko murmured. Kozo snorted. "Insert the entry plug!"

"I am curious, though," he said. "Aren't you worried that she might have an agenda?"

"I think we're past the point of _thinking_ that, and no, not worried."

"So, if she were to try to use Eva to kill us all …"

She pulled a remote out of her pocket. "I took the liberty of installing a manual override."

"Doesn't Eva have a habit of rejecting those?"

"This particular override doesn't use the Eva's systems at all, so no, not a problem."

"How does it work?"

"With fifteen kilograms of C4 in the pilot's seat," Ritsuko said coolly. "You'll notice that the entry plug is pointing away from us. I'm betting that whatever her story is, she can be useful to us, but I do like to hedge my bets."

"For some reason, I don't find myself reassured," said Kozo.

"You should. I have no reason to blow you up at present. Start the first connection!"

They watched eight monitors, showing various psychometric, biometric, and mechanical data. All were within acceptable ranges. "Connect main power supply!"

The junior techs shouted technobabble to one another, as the voltage reached critical and the Eva powered up.

"Eee!" Chitose squealed.

"What is it?" Ritsuko asked urgently.

"That tickles!"

Ritsuko shook her head angrily, hand over heart. "Everyone, stay alert. Clearing absolute borderline in 0.5 … 0.4 … 0.3 …"

Asuka drew her prog knife and activated it.

"… 0.2 …"

Kozo leant forward, biting his lip.

"… 0.1 …"

Shinji sat on his futon, worrying about Asuka.

"Absolute borderline cleared!" Ritsuko announced, relieved. "She's successfully activated. Good work, everyone." Her phone buzzed. "Yes? Well, well. Someone has a remarkably good sense of timing. Send the alerts." She clicked it off. "The thirteenth Angel is approaching."

…

Misato's first impression was of a gigantic violet sea urchin, or maybe a dandelion seed. It had a red spherical core, from which protruded hundreds or thousands of long, slender spines in all directions. It had somehow bobbed to the surface of the ocean a few kilometres out, and was rolling along atop the waves at what Magi calculated was a steady 59 kmph.

Together with Kozo, Maya, Makoto, Shigeru, and some junior support staff, Misato and Ritsuko had set up a forward command centre at Ashitaka. Asuka was waiting at the beach with a small armoury; Chitose was still in the activation chamber, learning how to walk without losing balance; Rei was waiting inside the Geofront on the Commander's orders; Shinji was in an overwatch transport circling five kilometres above the ground. Misato had decided to hold him in reserve as a compromise between risking defeat in detail and risking having all three active Evas wiped out at once by an unknown ability.

"It can't actually be light enough to float, can it?" she asked.

"Unlikely," said Ritsuko. "Almost none of it's submerged; it would need to be almost as light as air. I think it's using its AT Field to give itself buoyancy without weakening its shield. All of the terrestrial Angels do a similar thing to keep from sinking into the earth, and to stop the square-cube law from crushing them."

"Fascinating. Hyuga, give the UN forces the go-ahead."

There were ten tense seconds, before they heard the blasts of artillery and saw ground attack craft diving in. The explosions splashed off scintillating walls of orange light, with no further effect. The Angel didn't give any retaliatory attacks, change speed or direction, or otherwise respond.

"Those explosions looked a little on the small side," Misato noted.

"Those were standard one-ton bombs, and 105-mm artillery," Makoto confirmed.

They considered this.

"How big is this thing?" she asked.

Maya loaded a rangefinder and triangulation program. "It's close to spherical, and mostly empty space, but its diameter is 319.6 metres," she reported.

"Right. Asuka, forget the glaive."

"Do I have to?" Asuka radioed back. "Guns are useless."

"They worked against the ninth."

"Yeah, when we had three Evas neutralising its AT Field."

"If you have a better idea, now would be a good time to share it."

At this point, the Angel was close enough that Asuka realised just how badly it had thrown her sense of perspective. It was over five times as tall as her and bristled with spikes comfortably twice her height, putting the core well out of her reach. All of a sudden, guns were looking pretty appealing. Asuka took a repeating missile launcher in one hand and a trusty pallet rifle in the other.

"AT Field to maximum," she said. "Engaging the target!"

She opened up with both weapons, spraying the Angel with high-explosive rounds and shells. Its AT Field bulged inward under her attack, but held. Still without changing course, it rolled forward.

"It's too strong at this distance. Big surprise. I'm going to wait for it to get closer."

"Stay alert," Misato cautioned. "We don't know what kind of attacks it has."

Asuka dropped both guns for a two-handed coilgun, which could supposedly fire a tungsten/titanium alloy needle the size of a bus at Mach 8. "Let's not find out, shall we?" She strode over to directly in the Angel's path.

It was rolling forward as fast as an urban car, but because of the scale, it was moving slower than an Eva could walk. Asuka crouched down and aimed her gun high, obviously planning to wait until it was virtually on top of her.

Shinji opened a line. "Asuka, be careful."

"Hey," she said with a smirk, "who's the ace pilot here?"

"You're cutting it close," Misato said. The Angel was two hundred metres away.

"Wait for it."

"Don't let it hit you."

"Wait."

"Asuka –"

Coilguns can theoretically be quiet, because there's no gunpowder and the projectile doesn't need to scrape along the barrel. In practice, though, the chamber is held under a vacuum which pops, there's the sonic boom of the projectile if it breaks the sound barrier, and the thunderclap of expanding superheated air in the needle's path. It flew forward faster than the eye could track, impossible to follow except by the plasma slipstream, punched clean through the Angel's AT Field, and ricocheted off a second wall of light, just around the Angel's core, with a sound like bells and shattering glass.

"No way," said Asuka.

"_Nested_ AT Fields?" Ritsuko gasped. "Impossible."

The Angel still hadn't slowed.

"Asuka, get out of there!" Misato cried.

"I'm not done yet." Asuka dropped the coilgun and rose into a martial arts stance. The Angel kept coming; she dodged between two of its spines and grabbed a hold of a third. The spine dug into the ground, then continued turning and lifted into the air, taking her with it. "Unh! I can't get at the core from the ground, so I've got to get to the top of this tumbleweed …"

"She's insane," Ritsuko said flatly, not into the microphone.

"It's working," Misato murmured back. "Asuka, keep going!"

Another spine pierced her power cable; the battery began its countdown. Five minutes until shutdown. She ejected the cable.

"Thirty seconds until she's above its core," Maya read out from her terminal.

Chitose opened a link to Shinji. "Are all Angels like this one?"

"No, most of them would have zapped her by now," he replied.

"Do you have video of them? I should really familiarise myself with them."

"Ask Misato, after the battle. Come on, Asuka …"

Without warning, thick, pustular yellow fluid flowed out of pores all over the spike. Asuka gave a yelp and twitched to avoid it, but it was too unexpected. It slathered onto her hands; it was slippery, and she slid down the spine.

"Get away from it!" Misato exclaimed.

"I can't! I'm stuck!"

They watched on the video feed as she tried to prise her hands and thighs off the spine, but the yellow gunk held her against it even as she slid along. She reached its end and slipped off, still stuck in the same awkward pose with her hands and thighs pressed together, and crashed into the ground, now spattered all over by the goo.

"What the hell is this?!" Asuka squealed, struggling without effect. "How do I get it off?!"

"Magi's on it," Ritsuko said. "It's … a combination of substances. There's an adhesive, an anti-hygroscopic, a lubricant, that'd be why it doesn't stick to the Angel, four unknown substances … overall pH is 7.38, no redox detected, and … there's an AT resonance link to the Angel."

"Meaning?!"

"It's held together with a resonance effect of the Angel's … meaning, you won't be able to get it off until the Angel is destroyed."

Asuka snarled and raised her own AT Field to try to neutralise the resonance effect and pulled, but it yielded without breaking.

"Is there anything at all we can do?" Misato asked. "Dilute it, break it down with acid or fire?"

Ritsuko winced. Ever since Asuka arrived, she had made a point of never mentioning the Eva-scale flamethrower, hoping that everyone else would quietly forget about it. "Magi says yes, but that it would take at least nine hours. Since the target will reach Tokyo-3 in about five minutes …"

Misato gave a grunt of annoyance. "Fine then. Eject the pi–" She saw that the yellow gunk had spattered the armour plate covering the entry plug. It had also got into the power socket. "Belay that. Asuka, we have to leave you there until the target is silenced. Your life support will hold, and that stuff won't kill you. Cut the nerve connections!"

"What?!" Asuka cried. "No! Misato! Don't you dare! Don't you f–"

Her communications link went dead.

"Can Chitose fight?" Misato asked Ritsuko.

"Her synch rate is high enough to move, and not much more," Ritsuko said. "Mogami, how co-ordinated do you feel?"

"This foot is problematic," she said. Ritsuko opened a camera to the testing room; Chitose was limping around, clearly favouring one leg. After a moment, it became apparent that her right foot wasn't working properly; none of the joints was flexing at all. It was less like a human foot than a giant steel sculpture of one.

Ritsuko opened a triptych screen, with one showing a wireframe of Unit-03's foot and shin, one with a colour-coded nerve map, and one covered in raw numerical data. She began typing commands, and the foot slowly loosened up.

"Good," Misato said. "Aoba, get her on a plane and follow the target, hurry. Ritz, do we have any JATO packs large enough to independently move an Eva?"

"We tried that, but they're just too heavy without a wing," Ritsuko said, still typing. "The R-type equipment can do a semi-guided drop, but that's it. It'll take ten minutes to install, plus the time to get her to HQ."

"Too long. We'll have to do without it. Hyuga, have Tokyo-3 sink everything. Make it into a carpark!"

The Angel skittered across the landscape, held up by its AT Field. The UN forces stood back and watched as it rolled on, slowed, and finally stopped in the heart of the city.

A sheen of orange light shimmered under its core, then a second overlapping layer of yellow, and a third of yellow-green. They hummed and brightened for long moments, then shot downward. Pulverised concrete, rebar, and bits of cars shot up like shrapnel from a bomb. When the dust cleared, they could see the Angel was over a crater ten metres deep. Three more layers of light appeared under it.

"First armour plate cracked!" Makoto cried. "Magi estimates only fourteen minutes until it's through to the Geofront!"

"They're getting stronger," Misato mused, thinking of the fifth, which, despite its firepower, had taken hours to drill through their armour.

The three AT Fields slammed into the armour plate, tearing it apart and throwing it in all directions, before reforming for a third blow.

"It's too fast," Misato murmured. "Chitose! Deploy!"

Chitose dropped out of her plane, free-fell for ten seconds, hit the ground, skidded, fell to her knees, and pushed herself back upright. "Extending AT Field!" she said, approached the Angel, and raised her hands; its outer AT Field buckled and tore. "By the way, should I have a weapon right now?"

Fuyutsuki's mouth opened slightly, and Ritsuko slapped her forehead, but Misato wasn't fazed. "No. Just keep its Field down. Shinji, you're going to drop onto its core and smash it. Ritz, have Magi compute the plane's trajectory needed. We're only going to have one shot at this."

"Assuming control," Ritsuko said. The plane banked and headed away from the battlefield, to give it room to manoeuvre.

The three layers of AT Field appeared beneath the Angel, charged for a moment, then rotated to face directly at Chitose. There was no cover anywhere in the city.

"Oh dear," she said, "what should I –"

The Field hit her like a freight train square on her chest plate, blasting her off her feet and sending her tumbling halfway across the city, throwing up clouds of bitumen and car.

"Heavy abrasion across torso and right arm armour," Makoto reported. "No internal damage detected."

"Ow," said Chitose.

"This thing's toying with us," Misato realised, as it charged another attack and discharged it into the ground, throwing out more debris.

"Second armour plate cracked!" Makoto reported. "Thirteen minutes!"

Chitose rolled onto her front, braced, and pushed herself to her feet, clumsy from her low synch rate. A flattened lorry peeled off her cheek and clanged to the ground. The Angel ignored her, and charged another attack, punching a hole through the second armour plate.

"Shinji's on the final approach," Ritsuko reported.

"Chitose! Get back in there! Once more!"

Chitose rolled her jaw and walked back to the Angel, just as it charged up another attack. She waited until it loosed the energy downward again, and only then did she raise her own Field to tear into it.

Shinji's plane dived down to five hundred metres and dropped him. He twisted in midair to avoid impaling himself on a spine, grabbed it with one hand and drew his prog knife with the other, and slid down to the core. He slammed into the inner AT Field hard enough to knock himself out of his seat, the LCL cushioning him against the crushing G-force. Yellow ooze seeped out of the spine, sticking to that hand and one leg.

"Augh! I'm caught!"

"Ignore that! Take it down!"

He shoved his knife into the Field and sliced it open. He brought his free foot around to widen the tear laterally.

The three-layered Field appeared below him, humming and brightening. Shinji barely had enough time for his eyes to widen.

Chitose stepped forward, pushed her AT Field out to maximum, and pulled. The three-layered Field swung around to face her and discharged, smashing her into the ground hard enough to make her bounce.

"Unit-03 has gone silent!" Maya said.

"Shinji! You're clear!"

He tore the AT Field wide open and stabbed the core. The yellow goo spurted out of the nearest dozen spines, spattering all over his Eva. He grunted, snarled, and stabbed it again and twisted his knife. The core resonated, vibrated, and smashed to pieces. The spines fell apart and rained down across the city.


	5. Sheni ben Lailah

Six holographic lights turned on in indeterminate space.

"You have some serious explaining to do this time, Ikari," said Red.

"The thirteenth Angel was destroyed, as required," Ikari replied. Above, repair crews were removing the last of its corpse and clearing away debris. They would be done for 98% of the city by morning. Apparently the Second Child had had to be sedated after almost hospitalising the worker who pulled her out of her downed Eva.

"You used the girl to pilot Unit-03, not the Fourth Child as was agreed," said Green.

"We agreed that Nerv would have operational autonomy, as required by circumstances. We didn't have time to synchronise the Fourth without risking another incident before the attack."

"You lying little –" began Red. Kihl's hand twitched; Red's hologram stuttered, and he fell silent.

"We will overlook this one time," said Kihl, "and you will give the girl to us."

Ikari considered how best to reply. "The Angels have proven able to attack in rapid succession. We must retain full operational effectiveness at all times."

"Which is why you will use the Fourth, effective immediately, and give us the girl. I will not tell you again."

"Very well." Ikari moved for the first time, glancing over his shoulder. "Fuyutsuki. Make it happen. How long will it take?"

Fuyutsuki continued to stare directly ahead. "Three days at least, sir, unless we wish to relax security on other assets. There's typically looting and unrest immediately following an attack, and we simply don't have the agents to spare for an apprehension."

This was, of course, a gross exaggeration. Ikari knew this, but saw no profit in undermining his subordinate and therefore himself.

Green scoffed. "You cannot simply _order_ her to return to us? I had assumed you exercised proper authority over your underlings."

"My authority is quite intact, thank you," Ikari said. "I merely assumed you had already tried that and been rebuffed, as otherwise you would do so yourself and would not be wasting all our time right now."

"This is intolerable," said Blue. "We shall send our own agents to collect her. You shall not interfere."

Ikari was silent for a time. "Very well," he said.

"Dismissed," said Kihl, and the holograms faded.

"You didn't fight for her," Fuyutsuki said, a note of disapproval in his voice.

"I can't defy the Committee outright. Not without knowing what her value may be."

"Have you considered the morale effect on the other pilots, if one of their own is removed?"

"I have. We won't be the ones removing her."

…

On Monday morning, Misato gave a lift to Asuka, Shinji, and Shinji's cello; all except Shinji got out at the school.

"You'd better remember to come after the test," Asuka warned him.

"I'll come straight over," he promised dutifully. "If you don't trust me, you could go instead."

She snorted. "I got stuck babysitting those rookies twice already. I'm not doing it a third time. Thirds are _your_ thing."

"Asuka, thank Shinji for your bento," Misato said, wearing a bland smile.

Asuka gave Misato a look of disgust, and she drove off. Asuka tried to lift the cello, but it was too bulky for her. She looked around and saw Toji loitering by the front door.

"Hey! Jock-stooge! Get over here!"

He gave her a look like he might a growling dog that may or may not have rabies, but approached anyway, cautiously. "What do you want?"

"Where's geek-stooge?"

"Ran off to Ashitaka for the day to perv on the new base there."

"Perv doesn't mean that."

"Not for people who aren't Kensuke, it doesn't."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. You'll do. Help me carry this to the music room."

Toji gave her a look. "You realise I'm Toji, not Shinji, right? I don't take orders from you."

"Look. This is his. Do you really want to tell him that someone stole it because you were too lazy to help carry it inside?"

"What's the magic word?"

"Krav Maga?"

He rolled his eyes right back at her and lifted the cello's base; she took the neck and tucked its bow under her arm. "You know, one day he's not going to put up with your crap any more."

"Don't try to think, Suzuhara, it doesn't suit you."

"I'm just wondering who you think will after he's gone."

She considered hitting him, but she couldn't without dropping Shinji's cello.

Back in her car, Misato hit the radio for some teen pop music.

Shinji hated it and thought it was on much too loud, but he said nothing about it. "Not that I'm complaining, exactly," he said, raising his voice a little over it instead, "but why are we doing this, again? And why does it have to be today? Mogami piloted fine, and we probably have weeks before the next Angel attacks. We almost always have before."

"We don't know that." Misato turned the music down. "Not any more, not after the twelfth. We can't predict their arrival dates in advance; Magi says there's about a twenty percent chance one attacks within a week, I think."

"How did Father know to send for me on the exact day the third Angel attacked, then?"

Misato thought about this. "That's … a good question. I don't know. I'll ask Ritz. As for Mogami … normally I'd say it was so we'd have a backup pilot for in case something happened to Nagisa" such as death "but this time it came from above."

"You're the third-highest ranking officer at Nerv, aren't you?"

"Ish," said Misato, unwilling to go into the complicated question of which of her and Ritsuko outranked the other. "This was from your father. I think he received the order from the UN."

Shinji's fist clenched without him noticing. "Right."

"So," she said, sensing the downswing in his mood, "you liked her, then? Thought she was cute?"

He blushed. "Not like that! Just that, well, she was nice. And she did help kill the Angel. It doesn't feel right to be trying to replace her after one battle, not if she wants to pilot." He paused. "You know, if she and Nagisa both want to pilot, and you don't have enough Evas, you could let one of them use Unit-01."

"Do you want that?" Misato asked. "You said you piloted Eva to hear words of praise from your father."

"I know. But … they both must have reasons to want to be here, too, don't they? Wouldn't it be selfish not to let them? We could take turns. It's not running away, is it? It would have been earlier, when there weren't enough pilots, but there are now, and I could stay on as a reserve."

"We'll see," said Misato. "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves. The Fourth Child still isn't synched, for one thing. That's what today is about."

"Hopefully he does better than when Asuka was watching him," Shinji said.

"Ritz thinks that was a problem with Unit-00, not Nagisa. In Unit-03, he should be fine, touchwood. I mean, it worked fine for Mogami, so we have to hope it was just a prototype issue."

"I guess. Today's her first day at school, isn't it? I hope she's alright."

"You're _sure_ you don't have a crush?"

"Misato! Come on. Aren't you a bit worried?"

"What could happen?"

…

"Why would China try to invade Vietnam?" Chitose asked.

The teacher and most of the class blinked in surprise. No-one ever asked him questions. "The sea level rises of Second Impact reduced their arable land. They had to seize more or starve."

"I mean, didn't they realise the Vietnamese would try to stop them?"

"Yes, but China is bigger and more powerful than Vietnam. They thought they would win, and they were at least partly correct. As I was saying before you interrupted –"

"Then shouldn't Vietnam have thought the same, and then offered to give them some food if they didn't invade? I mean, people die in invasions; wouldn't both sides have wanted to stop that?"

"Miss Mogami –"

"And there were supposed to be lots of local conflicts like that all around the world. Surely someone _somewhere_ should have thought of that. I mean it's not that complex. Or is it? Is there maybe some sort of political reason people can't do that sort of thing? Or emotional?"

Toji sighed and stared upward. Hikari smacked her hand to her forehead. Asuka ran her hand through her hair in exasperation. The other girls sniggered. Even Rei gave the new pilot a look.

…

"Clearing absolute borderline in 0.3 … 0.2 … 0.1 … cleared! The Fourth Child is synchronised with Unit-03! Standing by for synchronisation data."

Misato stood behind Ritsuko, reading her monitor over her shoulder. Last she checked, Asuka's synch rate was 85.4%, and slowly drifting upward. Shinji had been catching up for a while now, and stood at 78.8. Chitose had begun at 41.3% and slowly ticked upward during her battle, to 44.7, before spiking to 60.9% just before being knocked out; they hadn't tested her since then. Nagisa was at 80 flat on his first try, without so much as a flicker.

"Why isn't he even pretending not to be spoofing the system?" Misato asked, pitching her voice too low for the techs to overhear. "Is he _mocking_ us?"

"It might just be less effort to leave it like that," Ritsuko said. "Rather than letting it fluctuate. And frankly, I'd be insulted if he thought we might even for a moment think he couldn't cheat. I wasn't born yesterday."

"Why wouldn't you think that, if his synch score wasn't such an even number?"

"Because he's with Seele, and they always load their dice."

"Does this mean he can set his synch ratio to whatever he wants? Would the Eva respond?"

"Probably yes to both. There might be limits to his ratio; safeties to keep him below 95% so he can't suffer sympathetic injuries, for example. You'd have to ask him."

"Hmm."

"You seem distracted."

"I'm still thinking about the last battle. It's far too much of a coincidence that Mogami just happened to arrive in time to be synched when she did, right before the Angel showed up. She knew it was going to attack then."

"Either her, or the people she was with before did."

"The only other people who've ever known down to the day when an Angel would arrive was … well, us. When the third attacked. Why was that?"

"We weren't the only people, or even the first. The first were to know were Seele. They told us. They knew it from the Dead Sea Scrolls."

"Why do you know that and I don't?" Misato asked, affronted. "We're the same rank."

"I needed to know. They had a lot of information pertaining to Project E."

"I'm Chief of Operations, we can predict attacks, and I don't need to know?"

Ritsuko opened her mouth to give a non-answer, before realising that she had a potential ally here. She led Misato out of the room. "Maya? Take care of this for a minute." The door hissed shut behind her; leaving them alone. "Keep this to yourself …"

…

Chitose sat with her hand up and a bitterly resentful expression, while the teacher roundly ignored her. A message appeared on her laptop.

HorakiH: Stop interrupting, Mogami! It's disrespectful and disrupting the class.

Chitose dropped her hand to type with both. She touch-typed extremely quickly, and used the public forum, even though Hikari had sent her a private message.

MogamiC: But I don't understand it! What's the point of school if we don't learn things properly and how can we learn them if we don't understand them?

MogamiC: There are so many details he's just ignoring! Politics, emotions, economics, social situations, science! How am I supposed to understand the material without that?

MogamiC: How is *anyone* supposed to understand it? How do you? Wait, if you know, why don't we split up and have you teach half and he does the other? That way, if I'm 'disrupting' things, I'd only be disrupting half the class, not all of it.

HorakiH: Slow down I cant keep up

MogamiC: Can I just send you messages and have you explain things? But how do you know, if you're not allowed to ask questions either? Is it just intuitive for you?

MogamiC: Is it like this everywhere in Japan? If I wasn't allowed to ask questions about piloting Eva, we would have lost the last battle! And isn't the entire point of science to query the natural world?

MogamiC: Or maybe we learn about the politics and sociology and everything else in other classes? Or in later years? But I would have thought it would be more effective to teach all those things at once? Because I don't think I'll remember much of what he's saying because I can't integrate it into a single story. Will anyone else?

HorakiH: This isnt a science class its history

MogamiC: But why should we be learning about history when we can't even do it properly without understanding the scientific context? Or the political etc.

MogamiC: There are so many wonderful things in this world! Why should we be restricted to only seeing a tiny fraction of it, without any context?

SuzuharaT: hahaha dude what the hell

MogamiC: Hmm?

SuzuharaT: is it like a rule that eva pilots all have to be weird or something

MogamiC: No. Why would you think that?

There was a pause, while Toji searched for an answer which would be socially acceptable to say to a girl in public, but Hikari pre-empted him.

HorakiH: Suzuhara! You're being rude. Ayanami and Soryu are right here.

MogamiC: Rei's not weird. She's really nice and pretty! So are Shinji and Asuka.

MogamiC: And Kaworu, of course. But it goes without saying that I like him.

Tsuruko raised an eyebrow. She was much prettier, but Chitose and Kaworu were both pilots, and they apparently already knew each other.

MogamiC: I suppose we're all unusual, in that not many people can pilot Eva. But that's kind of circular reasoning, isn't it? I mean, there are probably more Eva pilots than people named Suzuhara Toji, but I don't think that makes you weird.

MogamiC: Or does it?

SuzuharaT: really nice asuka seriously

Toji glanced at Asuka. She was resting her head on her keyboard, her hands crossed over the back of her head, possibly covering her ears, making little groaning noises like one with a hangover, just below the teacher's threshold of hearing. Toji could see the computer cursor printing one character over and over. She obviously hadn't read more than a few lines of the conversation.

MogamiC: Oh she absolutely is! I'm probably her oldest friend. :)

MogamiC: As in the one who's been her friend the longest, not the oldest person who is her friend.

MogamiC: I thought about moving in with her but she's already living with two people so there might not be space and I don't want Rei to be lonely.

The other students turned as one to Rei, who was watching the conversation on her laptop. There was maybe the tiniest pink tinge in her cheeks. In the momentary lull in conversation, Chitose's hand shot back up.

HorakiH: Mogami!

MogamiC: I wasn't going to ask about the lecture!

MogamiC: I was going to ask how to connect this computer to the Internet proper. I could look up the answers myself that way.

SuzuharaT: hahahaha yes

Hikari's eye twitched.

HorakiH: That was disabled because some students were using it very irresponsibly.

MogamiC: But I haven't. Why not disable it for anyone who has been using it irresponsibly but not for me? I don't see why I should be punished for something I wasn't even here for.

MogamiC: Or why not allow it for everyone? Why do you care what others do?

MogamiC: Wait, what's your definition of 'irresponsible'?

MogamiC: Have people been hacking into Nerv or something? Why would they do that? None of us wants them wasting time dealing with that; that would help the Angels.

MogamiC: Is this a sex thing?

…

"The Scrolls were found shortly before the Katsuragi Expedition that triggered Second Impact," Ritsuko said. "Among other things, they're a sort of instruction manual for Adam, the Giant of Light. They're how the researchers knew where to look and what to expect, and it gave them a lot of the preliminary framework for their research. It's how we knew about AT Fields in advance, for example, and it was how they were able to contain Second Impact."

"That was _contained?_"

"Yes. If it hadn't been stopped when it was, the world would be populated exclusively by Angelic life forms now."

"What exactly was Second Impact, then? Because I get the feeling even I don't have the complete picture, not any more."

"It was the forced slumber of a Seed of Life," said Ritsuko. "Adam is supposedly the first Angel, but that's a misnomer, as is the second. He's the progenitor of all of the proper Angels; the things we've been killing, the third onward. The 'second Angel' is Lilith, the progenitor of all other life on Earth, including humankind. This is all ultimately a war between those two beings. At the time of Second Impact, Adam was dormant, but the expedition awoke him. He immediately regenerated and began germinating the Angels, so the expedition had to silence him; this liberated massive amounts of energy, called Second Impact."

"Did – did the expedition know this would happen? In advance?"

"I was only told anything about the Scrolls because I needed to know. The Evas are all at least partly grown from Adam's cell cultures; that's what lets them project and neutralise AT Fields. There'd be no way to engineer that without knowing some of the the Scrolls' technical information, so I was shown those parts, but I don't know much about the history."

"Seele holds the scrolls," Misato mused, wondering at the thought that she'd been using Angelic technology this entire time. "So they must have at least suspected. Why? Why would anyone want that?"

"I wasn't told, but I assume they have an agenda. As does the Commander. Shouldn't you be more interested in the Angels?"

"I joined Nerv as much for revenge as for saving the world." Misato stopped and thought about Shinji, and Asuka, and Rei and Chitose and even Kaworu. Her mind even twitched toward Kaji for a moment. "But maybe I'm not the same woman I was back then," she admitted. "What do you know about them that I don't already?"

"The Scrolls told us what their minimum gestational period was. Fifteen years. They don't grow like humans do. Remember the eighth? It took less than a minute to hatch to full power. They spend their time dreaming up what their form will be, and then, when they have one that seems good enough, they quickly grow into it and attack. After that, they only tinker with it, like the third gaining its second face. The ones that are coming now have had longer to dream; that's why they've generally been getting stronger. I don't know why the twelfth was so weak; I'm provisionally assuming it was an outlier, that it settled on a weak form purely by chance. That notwithstanding, the last Angel we fight will probably be the worst.

"The Scrolls only told us that the shortest gestation would be fifteen years, and that the others would tend to space themselves out; they didn't give specific dates. That's why we have to keep the pilots on call, rather than just having them on-base on the days of attacks."

"But Mogami did know. Could there have been a part of the Scrolls you weren't told about?"

"I'm sure there are several. Seele likes to withhold as much information as possible, and I only ever saw partial transcripts; I assume they creatively abridged them. That's part of why I wanted the eighth captured alive, so I could verify what I was told. Are you suggesting the girl might be a mole, and all the evidence against that is just reverse psychology?"

"It's the sort of thing Seele would do," said Misato. "Don't you agree?"

"It would be in character for them, yes. But … it's the sort of thing fictional conspiracies do, not real ones. It's like they trained her specifically to raise red flags, sent her in with no handler, and then begged us to give her back to them. There were so many opportunities for us to get rid of her, and then the entire gambit would have failed. She's only still here by luck."

"But she is still here. They might have planned for that."

"If we don't assume that they can perfectly predict every single one of our decisions, which are after all based on a chaotic mix of emotion and logic, and that they realise this, then allowing so many chances for their plan to fail suddenly becomes a liability for them. A much simpler explanation is that something went wrong. They're not infallible, after all, no matter how much they like to pretend they are. My guess is that she's betraying them. They groomed her to be their cat's paw, and she's decided for her own reasons that she won't do it. I suspect she wasn't even supposed to come here at all, or at least, not like she did."

"Suppose that you're right. How did she know when the Angel would attack?"

"At a guess, they told her before she went rogue. Maybe that was even the impetus; maybe she thought she could ingratiate herself with us by defeating it. She knows part of the Scrolls that I don't, or at least Seele's interpretation. Perhaps she arrived when she did so that we would take her in and protect her from Seele, or maybe to thwart whatever Nagisa was planning."

"If that's true, we need to interview her about the Scrolls," said Misato. "Oh. Crap. If that's true, they're already after her."

Ritsuko considered this. "I can't believe I didn't think of that."

"Finish the synch," Misato ordered, turning to leave. "I've got to get to her before Seele does."

…

"Rise! Bow! Sit!"

The final syllable was barely out of Hikari's mouth before Chitose was out of her seat. She made for Rei, took the shorter girl's hand and, with surprising strength, pulled her out of her seat and tugged her out of the classroom. Hikari narrowed her eyes as they went.

"Ugh," said Chitose, as soon as they were outside. "I felt like I was suffocating. How do you stand it? I was there for two hours, but to go back, day after day …"

Rei said nothing.

Chitose glanced down, saw she was still holding Rei's hand, and released it. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have dragged you out here. Maybe you like it in there. Do you?"

Rei had never directly considered whether she liked school. It did nothing to alleviate the ennui of her existence, she didn't exactly like most of her classmates, and she disliked the crowds (she had a very low tolerance for large groups); but, by and large, it wasn't any worse than lying on her bed.

"Let's go home," Chitose said, taking her silence for indifference.

"Why?"

"Because it's so fucking boring here," she said earnestly.

Rei stared.

"I'll make lunch for you if you come with me," Chitose added.

"We are supposed to stay in school."

"What will happen if we don't?"

Rei thought. The Commander would be displeased. But she had already disobeyed his implicit orders, in allowing Chitose to share her apartment.

Chitose gave a triumphant smile and a half-shrug, and turned to leave. Rei followed her.

"Is there a library in this city?" Chitose asked. "I've heard about those but never seen one. I should buy a city map. Or a computer, so I could look it up online. I wish I had my old desktop, but it blew up. I like the idea of having lots of free books in one place. Is there a computer store here? There must be; Tokyo-3 is supposed to be a city of science."

"My apartment does not have the infrastructure for an Internet connection," Rei volunteered.

"It doesn't? You need infrastructure? Like what?"

Rei thought. She'd never stopped to wonder before, because she had never needed the Internet at home, but she'd overheard people discussing it before. "Cables," she said.

"The computer shop people would probably know," Chitose said. "Anyway I was thinking I should get some cookbooks because I don't actually know how to cook anything, except for copying that stir fry you made last night. Are you a vegetarian? If one isn't a vegetarian, does it count as a new experience to stop eating meat? Because it's what I'm used to, but it's not like I'd be starting doing anything new, just stopping doing something old. Maybe I should try it for a bit and see what it's like? It would be easier while I'm living with you, since I wouldn't need to cook two different meals. But then it might be fun cooking two. It all depends on the cookbooks."

Rei was beginning to get a headache. She'd barely ever questioned anything before; having Chitose around was like someone who'd been deaf their entire lives having their hearing restored in a rave club.

Chitose led the way up to the apartment, chattering incessantly. Rei tuned her out altogether, until she opened the front door and abruptly fell silent. Rei looked up. Inside the apartment stood Kaworu's handler, Mrs Bauer. Around her were four men who could have been Section Two but who weren't.

"Hello, Chitose," Bauer said, then switched to German. « I'm here to bring you back. »

Chitose lowered her centre of gravity and positioned her feet in what would be a martial arts stance if she raised her hands and made fists. "Rei," she said, speaking very slowly and clearly, her voice half an octave lower than usual and her face perfectly smooth, not taking her eyes off Mrs Bauer, "why don't you make some tea for our guests."

"I have no tea," said Rei.

"Then it would be a very good idea for you to go down to the shops and buy some, wouldn't it." Without breaking eye contact, Chitose reached into her bag, fished out a wallet, and handed it to Rei.

"I," said Rei.

There was silence, except for the ever-present cicadas and the banging of construction crews.

"A good host doesn't keep her guests waiting, Rei."

Rei took the wallet, turned, glanced over her shoulder, and left.

« I'm not going back there, » Chitose said.

« You know you're not allowed out, » Bauer replied. « You broke the rules. »

« I don't care. I _don't care_. I'm not, I'm _never_ going back there. »

« Oh, yes, you are. »

« I've grown more in the last three days than the past seven years. I'm not the same little girl I was. You can't make me. »

« I'm sorry, but I can't let you decide that. Seize her. »

The men moved forward.

…

"Asuka," Tsuruko said. Asuka had chosen to sit by herself under a tree; her mood was visibly bad enough that Hikari had taken the hint and found somewhere else to eat. "Do you have a moment?"

Asuka really wasn't in the mood, but on the other hand, Tsuruko was one of her few anchors to normalcy, almost the only person she knew who didn't spend their time killing Angels. "What is it?"

"That girl … she said she was a pilot. What's she like?"

Asuka sighed. So much for normalcy. "You saw, didn't you? You were there this morning."

"Surely that was a once-off. She can't be like that all the time."

"I wish."

"Really? Is it a problem when you're, you know?"

Asuka hadn't yet got around to watching the videos of the battle, but she gathered that Chitose had helped, at the cost of wrecking Unit-03. "No. It's annoying as anything the rest of the time, but she's not stupid enough to get distracted when we're fighting for our lives. I mean, she's not really any good at it, but she can make Eva move."

"Okay. What do the other pilots think about her?"

Asuka shrugged, irritated. "How should I know? She just got here."

"I don't know. What's your first impression? Humour me."

"I guess Shinji likes her, but he likes everyone. Ayanami … I can't tell, but I think she likes her? She's staying at her apartment, so I guess. They haven't had to put up with her for too long yet, though."

"I see. What about Kaworu?"

Asuka shut her eyes and rolled them. Tsuruko was less subtle than she thought she was. Asuka didn't really care about Kaworu's love life, or lack thereof, but one thing she didn't need was to put up with schoolgirl drama. "He never seemed interested in any girls at all."

"Really," Tsuruko said, offended. "I thought he was very nice."

"Oh, he's polite, sure. But not interested-interested."

"I see. Thank you, Asuka. I'll see you in class." And she got up and walked off.

Asuka silently thanked God she was gone.

…

Misato pulled up outside Rei's apartment, and made it all of two steps toward the apartment block's stairs before Kaji waved her down.

"Good morning, Misato," he said, with only a perfunctory smile this time. "I wouldn't go any further if I were you."

She drew her gun. "I swear, if I find out you've done something to one of my pilots …"

He raised his hands in surrender. "I'm not doing anything. I'm just watching and waiting. That warning was in good faith. Things could get nasty up there, and not just for you."

She narrowed her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"A large number of men with guns, no necks, and immunity from all prosecution," Kaji said. "And they're expecting Nerv to interfere."

Misato pressed forward angrily. "Then I'd hate to disappoint them."

"They also have orders to, quote, 'scorch the earth' if they can't complete their mission," he added. "Mogami isn't the only one who lives in there."

Misato clenched a fist and considered shooting him right there. "What is she to them?"

"I honestly know less than you seem to think I do" she pulled back her gun's hammer "but I think she was supposed to be a pilot cum spy. In case an Angel got Nagisa, I suppose, or he annoyed Ikari and had an unfortunate accident. But she didn't like wherever they were keeping her – I expect it wasn't a barrel of laughs – and broke out and came here rather than wait for him to die. Having two of them here at once was never part of their plan, not when one of them isn't following orders and is getting in the way of the one who is. Ritsie seems to have guessed this, and she wants to use Mogami out of spite."

"I don't really blame her. Tell me, Kaji, what do you know about the Dead Sea Scrolls?"

"Seele has them, has for about twenty years now, I think. They contain some sort of information about the Angels, but I don't know what. They guard them pretty tightly."

"What if I told you that part of that information was what would happen at the Katsuragi expedition?"

Kaji read her eyes. "I'd ask how certain you were that whoever told you that wasn't trying to manipulate you. I doubt you've seen the Scrolls first-hand, not if I haven't – no offence – so my best guess would be that Ritsie told you that. I also know that she has a grudge against them for other reasons."

"If you asked me that, I'd ask you whether you weren't just trying to rationalise your own job. Because if they really did deliberately cause Second Impact, that would be a pretty damn good reason for her to hold a grudge. And given how much else they've known about the Angels, that they knew how to identify them by haemochromatography and how to build an AT Field and the exact day the third would come and even where almost all of them would attack, given all that it'd be a pretty damn big snafu if they didn't know what would happen when they played with the Giant of Light."

Kaji blinked at this last. "That … is actually a really good point. I need to verify it."

At this point, Rei walked up, carrying shopping bags laden with about a year's supply of tea, in at least thirty different varieties. She hadn't known which kind Chitose wanted.

"Major Katsuragi," she said. "Why are you pointing a gun at Mr Kaji?"

Misato put her gun away. "It's a grown-up thing. What are you doing out here? And more importantly, how did you get out without Kaji seeing?"

"He did see," Rei said.

Misato reached for her gun again.

"I never said she was in there," Kaji said. "I said other people were. I assumed you didn't want to get civilians killed in a shoot-out. My apologies," he added.

Rei blinked. "Excuse me." And she made for the stairs.

Misato blocked her. "Rei, there are bad men up there."

"Mogami told me to hurry back," Rei said. "I infer this meant she would deal with them."

Misato blinked. "You mean you saw them?"

"Yes."

"In your apartment? With her? They knew she was there?"

"They spoke to one another."

"What did they say?"

"They spoke in German, Major."

"But … why would … how long ago was this?"

Rei thought. "Approximately fifteen minutes ago, Major."

Misato looked at Kaji. He frowned.

"I assumed they were checking every apartment one by one," he said. "I haven't heard anything. They couldn't possibly have taken that long to …"

He reached for his gun. Misato was faster.

"I promise I won't shoot you, Rei, or Mogami," he said, raising his other hand in surrender.

"You definitely won't if you're not armed," she pointed out. He sighed, then took out his gun and offered it to her butt-first. She took it, holstered it in her waistband, and motioned him back. "Lie down. On your front."

"This is undignified," he complained, but complying. He knew exactly how far he could push her.

"So is bleeding out from your crotch."

"There's a sexist joke in there somewhere."

"There surely is. Now, don't move. Rei, stay here and watch him. And call Section Two, tell them I want reinforcements."

She kicked off her shoes for silence and turned and began climbing the stairs, slowly and quietly, every sense straining, glancing over her shoulder periodically to make sure Kaji was staying where she'd told him. At length she made it to Rei's floor; her door was shut. She slunk toward it and knocked twice, standing off to the side, in case someone inside had a shotgun.

"Rei?" came a girl's voice.

Misato twisted the handle and pushed the door open. It was lighter inside than she remembered; the curtains were open. Chitose stood in the corridor, holding a mop; a bucket was beside her, and the floor gleamed with fresh water.

"Major Katsuragi?" Chitose asked. "What are you doing here?" She noticed the gun in Misato's hand, and her voice dropped from its light, airy tone to her slower, darker one. "You're with them."

"What? No. I heard there were men in here, I thought you were in trouble. Where are they?"

"Oh!" All at once, her tone was high and carefree again. "No, they left."

"They … left."

"Yes! That's definitely what happened. They wanted me to go with them, so I explained that I had to stay here and pilot, and they agreed with me and left."

Misato holstered her gun. "And you randomly decided to start mopping."

"Ah!" Chitose said, jumping guiltily. "There was a woman with them, and she mentioned she thought it looked dirty in here, and I thought she was right so I decided to clean up. Hang on, just let me get rid of this water."

She took the bucket and mop and loped to the kitchen, then wrung out the mop and poured the bucket down the sink. Misato sniffed; there was a strong coppery smell in the air.

"Right," she said, quickly turning to leave. "Well, it looks like you have everything under control here. Sorry to bother you."

"It's no bother, Major!" Chitose called. "I enjoy your company. We should have dinner together sometime. I'm going to learn how to cook. By the way, do you know if there's a library in this city? I want to read a cookbook."

"There is, but I'm not sure where exactly. Somewhere north of here, I think. Well, I've got to go, so …"

"Of course! Goodbye, Major Katsuragi!"

Misato left and waved Rei up. She let Kaji back up, gave him his gun, and waited until Rei was out of earshot to hiss, "What the hell is she?!"

"I take it there are five missing persons?" he replied, dusting himself down. "She's an Angel hunter. If you thought a couple of yakuza rejects could beat that, you don't give the Angels enough credit. I did warn Ritsie she was dangerous."

"Pilots are only supposed to be dangerous _while they're inside Eva_. They're fourteen-year-olds!"

"She wasn't supposed to be dangerous at all; they told me they could control her. I'm asking for back danger pay."

"Five men, and she isn't even scratched. If I were to tell her she couldn't pilot …"

"Maybe you shouldn't tell her that. I know I won't. If it's any consolation, you can probably trust me now when I say she isn't working for Seele any more."

"Just tell me one thing. Is Rei safe with her?"

"I assume so. The file I read didn't suggest otherwise, although the file also said she'd do as Seele operatives ordered, so maybe take it with a grain of salt. A better question would be, is there anything you could do about it? What exactly do you suppose she would do if you ordered Rei to leave this apartment suddenly and with no explanation?"

"God damn it." Misato massaged her temple. "So what _do_ we do now?"

Kaji shrugged. "Well, I know I'm not going to do anything that might annoy her. As for you, I don't know. Nothing, I suppose. You need all the pilots you can get, and she can do that fine."

"But what if she snaps and Rei's there?"

"Ask Ritsie to give her a psych evaluation, maybe. We could talk more about this later if you'd like, but would you mind if I left? I have a report to write."

"Fine," she said, then, grudgingly, "I'll see you around."

He beamed and waved as he walked off.

She pulled out her phone and called Section Two. "Where the hell were my reinforcements?" she asked. "_Not to the damn school!_ I'm at – never mind. The situation's passed. What I want now is video footage from the spy sats for the last hour of the block around the First Child's apartment waiting on my desk by the time I get back. _Pretty damn soon._" She hung up with disgust. "Useless …"

She thought about calling Ritsuko, but frankly the woman had enough on her plate already. She put her phone away and headed back up the stairs. She still needed answers.

…

Shinji watched Kaworu as they rode the tram back to the surface. Nagisa stared out the window, eyes criss-crossing the Geofront; he was clearly memorising every detail.

"Thank you for your assistance today, Ikari Shinji," he said without turning; Shinji started. "I have hoped to pilot for a long time now. It was annoying to be forbidden."

"That's fine," said Shinji. "All I had to do was sit there; there weren't any problems. If there'd been any real danger, we would have done it in Ashitaka again."

"Even so," said Nagisa. "That is how Lilin help one another, isn't it? Something which is less trouble for you than it saves another."

"Lilin?"

"It means human," Nagisa said. He turned at last and gave Shinji a high-wattage smile. "Really, that's what separates us from the Angels. If two of them arrived at once and cooperated, we'd have no chance. It's by helping one another that we – that you – have beaten them so far."

"I, um, thank you, Nagisa."

"Call me Kaworu, Ikari Shinji."

Shinji smiled back. "Then no more Ikari from you. If you don't mind me asking – why do you want to pilot Eva? Asuka and Mogami like it, I think, but I don't really. I'm not really sure about Ayanami."

Kaworu turned back to the window and ruminated on this. "I suppose that one could say that we define ourselves in terms of other people," he said at length. "From that perspective, I choose to pilot for the same reason the rest of you do. Except Schätzchen," he added, smiling as though at a private joke. "Chitose. She's too selfish for that."

"Asuka told me she piloted for herself."

"She probably tells herself that, too. Do you care for her?"

Shinji chose to misinterpret the question. "Of course. Pilots have to stick together."

"We do," Kaworu agreed, smiling at Shinji again, choosing not to press the issue. He opened his mouth to continue, but at that moment his phone chirped. He glanced down at it; his brow furrowed. "I'm terribly sorry, but this is very important. Excuse me."

"It's okay," Shinji said, even though he did find it rather annoying, as Kaworu opened his phone and read a text. _[Kaworu? I __may owe you an apology. O__n a scale from zero to ten, how attached were you to Mrs Bauer?]_ His name was written without an honorific.

"I see," he said, and put the phone away.

"What was it? If you don't mind."

"Not at all. My handler has died."

"Oh. I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Don't be. She was old, and it was quick. Schätzchen was with her in her final moments."

"I thought she was living with Rei?"

"I think my handler was visiting. They knew each other from when we were young."

"You and Mogami must be pretty close?" Shinji prompted.

"Yes. We haven't seen each other for years, although we do talk by IM; I'm sure our reunion will be something special. We met in Berlin. We have a lot in common. She was the only person who could empathise with the pressure my destiny exerted on me, and conversely. May I suppose that you care for the Second Child for similar reasons?"

Shinji remembered when the fifth Angel had first blasted him, and Rei had talked to him. If she hadn't, if he'd had Dr Akagi or Misato giving him a pep talk, he probably wouldn't have piloted. And then they'd all be dead. Rei was kinder than people gave her credit for, but Asuka had a vitality and presence that she didn't. "Yeah, I guess so."

The tram pulled to a stop, and they got off.

"Where are you going now, Kaworu?" Shinji asked.

"I'd like to see more of the city. The people fascinate me. Will you come with me?"

"I promised Asuka I'd find her after school. She wants to play a duet with me; you know how there's the music room in the west wing?"

Kaworu perked up at this. "There is? I'd wondered about that. Would you mind if I came too? It's been too long since I last played."

"What do you play?"

"Piano and violin. I tried oboe once, but it wasn't for me."

"Do you have a violin? Asuka wants the piano. And, um, no offence, but she said a duet. I mean, I wouldn't mind, but she can be sort of … possessive?"

"If it's a problem, I'll sit out today and come back later," Kaworu said.

"I guess that should be fine," said Shinji, who knew full well that Asuka would blow up at them both but who didn't have the heart to refuse Kaworu after he had been nice to him.

…

Misato sat down on Rei's bed, Chitose beside her. Rei sat at her desk, working on homework. All three women had glasses of tea; Rei hadn't owned any teacups.

"What did you want to ask me?" Chitose prompted.

"Do you know anything about the Dead Sea Scrolls?" Misato asked bluntly. Normally she'd ask for privacy, but Rei already probably knew more top secrets than she did.

"Yes," said Chitose.

There was a pause.

"Oh! You want me to tell you about them? Well, Seele owns them, and they have information about the Angels."

"Right," said Misato. "I was hoping for a little more detail. What do they say about the Angels' gestational periods?"

Chitose's voice slowed down, although it stayed at its usual pitch. "They said that the first would hatch on the date it did, and that the others will hatch after then, but they didn't give details."

"Then it was lucky you arrived in time to help against the last Angel, wasn't it?"

"Very."

"Please," Misato said. "I'm the Manager of Operations. I need to know when battles will take place if I'm going to plan for them." She took a risk. "And if Seele's trying to keep it secret, it'd really annoy them if you told me."

Chitose brightened, and her voice sped back up. "That's true, Major Katsuragi. Well, I personally didn't know it would attack then, and I can't predict any future dates. I arrived when I did because I wanted to follow Kaworu-chan here. We're … old friends. Seele sent him here, and they might have known about the Angel and sent him with enough time to maybe do some training, but I don't think so, I think that was a coincidence. I never got the feeling they knew the dates of attacks, and I think they would have told me if they did because they told me a few other things."

"Such as?"

"The Angels are powerful, but did you know that they're really, really stupid?" Chitose asked. "Seele thinks almost none of them is any smarter than a moth."

"That can't be right," Misato said, thinking of the computer virus Angel, which had successfully hacked two of the Magi. "You weren't there for the fifth, but it knew where Shinji would be before he even got to the surface."

"I watched the footage last night," Chitose nodded, "and it was operating on reflex. It's not like it magically knew what the catapult tower did, when it couldn't even see it because there was another building in the way, right? It could sense an AT Field approaching, and it panicked. Did you know that AT stands for Absolute Terror? The Angels aren't intelligent enough to feel many emotions, but they can feel that one, and they do whenever they sense another AT Field nearby. That's why they prioritise attacking Evas over other military hardware, even before they start neutralising the Angel's AT Field; it went for Shinji when it couldn't even see him, rather than any of the gun emplacements around the city."

"We sent in a dummy balloon after it first shot Unit-01, to see how it reacted," Misato said. It was possible Chitose was wrong or lying, after all, although probably not lying: she was terrible at that.

The virus Angel had done well with the Magi, but that could almost have been luck: it was a physical infection, so it could take over the Magi without needing to know how to break the digital security. It just happened to have ridden in on a part installed where it had easy access to the supercomputers' physical memory banks, and then tried to use the most obvious attack it could find. If it had, for example, broken out the Bakelite, which didn't require approval of all three Magi, it could have easily suffocated them all; it could have cut their power or deactivated life support or done any number of other crippling things. And at the time, the talk about evolution leading to death had struck Misato as odd; she wasn't an expert and so didn't argue with Ritsuko, but she thought that evolution generally led to fitter organisms, not mass suicide. Ritsuko probably only said that because she couldn't be bothered explaining what she was actually thinking; she did that all the time when she thought other people wouldn't understand her.

Chitose nodded. "And the Angel zapped it, because it looked like Unit-01. It wasn't smart enough to imagine the concept of a decoy, so it assumed it was the same as the other big purple thing it saw earlier, even though it couldn't feel an AT Field the second time. When Shinji tried sniping it and it shot before he could, it detected him by his Field."

"That … might be very useful, Mogami, thank you," Misato said, and her mind began whirring with potential applications. "Do you know anything else like that, which could be useful tactically?"

"I know where you can find them?" Chitose offered. "Would that help?"

"… Yes?"

"Second Impact flung the Angels' embryos across the world. Most landed in the ocean, just by luck, because two thirds of the world's surface is covered by water. One went up into space, and then its AT Field pushed it into circular orbit, and it grew into the tenth. One was shot downward, into the Earth's mantle, then migrated toward here, winding up in Mt Asama and becoming the eighth. The remaining … seven? that we haven't killed yet, they all would have done similar things. I don't think any others are in space or the mantle, so probably two or three are on land somewhere, buried I suppose, and the rest are in the ocean."

"Oh," said Misato, disappointed. "I was hoping you could give coordinates so we could raid them before they matured, like with the eighth."

"I don't know GPS coordinates, but I'm positive that at least one of them didn't go very far," Chitose said. "It probably wasn't one of the ones that came already, and if not, there's an Angel foetus in Antarctica."

…

With no Kensuke or Shinji to wait for, Toji was first out the door. Hikari rolled her eyes and made for Asuka with dignity.

Outside, Toji's phone chimed. It was a text from Murakami Yuki.

_[Hey, Toji. Mum wants me to help clean up the garden. Angel damage. It's just some rubble, nbd. You want to help? I'll shout you takeaway and a movie after?]_

He hesitated. Kensuke did ask her out first. But she obviously hadn't been interested in him. For whatever reason it had been him, Toji, who had caught her eye. So it wasn't as though he'd be depriving Kensuke of anything. And she was asking him for a job, not a date. He could firmly but politely tell her no if she got any ideas. He would never betray his best friend, after all.

Asuka and Hikari brushed past him. "Sorry, Hikari, but the Idiot wants me to wait for him here," Asuka said. "I swear, he follows me around like a lost puppy."

"I see," Hikari said, neither arguing nor believing. "Well, I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then."

"Bye." And Asuka continued on to the music room. As she approached, she could hear a piano thundering away the first movement from Beethoven's ninth. Shinji was waiting outside for her. "Hey, Idiot, you were supposed to keep everyone else out."

"It's not –"

She pushed past him and opened the door to throw the pianist out. Her face fell when she saw who it was. "Smarmy, what the hell are you doing here? Shinji and I are playing."

The room was a small auditorium. At the back was a slightly raised stage, large enough for about ten musicians, faced by twenty seats; on it was Kaworu's baby grand piano. There were a few lockers at one end where the school kept a few old instruments; Kaworu had picked a lock and retrieved a violin, which he had sat against the piano.

He finished the bar and turned on his stool to face her. "My apologies, Pilot Soryu. You weren't here yet."

"Well I'm here now." She paused. "Beethoven's ninth?" she added gleefully. "You're still playing that? What are you, eight? That's like the easiest piece there is."

"It's a fine piece," he said, unoffended, not mentioning that he'd played the first movement of Beethoven's fifth a few minutes earlier.

"Let me show you some real music," she said. She strode forward, elbowed him off the stool, and did some warm-up scales. She made a few mistakes, but quickly fixed them. "Watch this." Then she played the first twenty-six bars of Bach's prelude and fugue in C minor, the hardest, fastest, most impressive piece she knew. "What do you think?"

"Very nice," Kaworu said, applauding lightly.

"That was … good," Shinji said. "I don't think I can keep up with that."

"Well, of course not," she said. "They say that when you first try a piece for two people, it should only be half as hard as you can do by yourself. Do they have any sheet music here?" Her gaze immediately alighted on the score open on the piano's stand, which happened to be Pachelbel's Canon. "Perfect."

Kaworu smirked without either other Child noticing, and picked up his violin.

"Do we have to?" Shinji groaned, seeing it. "That's just semibreves for cello."

"Didn't I just say a warm-up piece should be easy?"

"That arrangement is for two violins, a viola and a cello," Kaworu noted.

"I'll take first violin and the viola. Is there a second copy –? You two can share that one then."

Shinji sighed and set it up on a music stand. She despaired of ever managing to get him to stand up for himself. Kaworu moved behind him and readied his violin.

…

"You'd better not screw this up," Asuka said.

Shinji blinked. That was the first time he'd ever heard her say that to someone other than himself.

The three combat Evas stood in a loose line on the beach, with Asuka in the middle with her trusty glaive, and the two boys flanking her with pallet rifles. They could see the water swirling and eddying as the next Angel approached.

"We won't beat the Angel if I do nothing," Kaworu said. His orange-and-white plugsuit reminded Shinji of how Unit-00 had looked, until they removed what was left of its armour once the fifth Angel was finished with it, and replaced it with blue plates to fit the rainbow colouring scheme.

"Why not? We've beaten all the others without you," Asuka pointed out.

"You had help with most of them."

"Could you two possibly give it a rest for two goddamn seconds?" Misato asked, massaging her temples. "Asuka, if you can't work together with the other pilots, I'm sure Chitose would."

Asuka scowled. "Just make sure you don't shoot me," she said. "That goes for you too, Third."

"Why do you call him that, Asuka?" Chitose asked, from a transport VTOL one kilometre from the front; it should theoretically be possible for her to tag in for Kaworu if he was incapacitated, although realistically this seemed unlikely.

"Because, _Fifth_, it's his rank, and in combat situations, that's how pros address each other."

"Major Katsuragi doesn't," Chitose pointed out. "In fact, I don't think anyone here does, other than for superior officers. Is it a thing in normal armies? What if there are several people with the same rank? Most armies have lots of people with the lower ranks, I think."

Asuka rolled her eyes, and the Angel broke the surface of the ocean. They gasped.

"Well," said Misato grimly. "I thought that was too easy. It can resurrect itself."

It was the twelfth Angel, mostly. There was the same misshapen appearance, like a bag of rancid yoghurt that would fall apart by itself under a stiff breeze, but now there were thick brown bands around its yellow torso and foreleg, where Asuka had chopped it apart last time; they glittered with iridescence.

"I thought you said it was dead," Asuka said.

"It was," Ritsuko said, frowning. "We tested a sample, it was nothing but LCL. Regenerating from that without some sort of blueprint is impossible."

"I don't think that word means what you think it means," Chitose said. "I mean, if it happened, obviously it's possible. What does happen is a subset of what could possibly happen, right?"

Misato ignored this. "Ritz, any idea on how to kill it permanently?"

"Capture the LCL it bleeds out when it dies," Ritsuko said. "I don't know how it regenerated, but it can't do it without the raw materials."

Misato scanned the map. "There's a depression four kilometres north of your position. Lure it there and then destroy it. Ritz, get a team prepped to hose up the LCL; the crater probably isn't watertight."

"That's going to be hard on battery power," said Asuka. "And –"

The Angel made a surprisingly fast lunge toward her; she stepped backward and swung her glaive around to drive it off. The blade bounced off the brown band around its foreleg, throwing sparks; she pivoted to dodge its other paw, and it backhanded her, forcing her to stagger back. Kaworu levelled his gun and opened fire, point-blank; the first few rounds bounced off its AT Field, before the rest penetrated and tore through its hide and ripped it apart. LCL sprayed out of the wounds; in moments, it was just an empty, disintegrating skin. Asuka was not pleased.

"You _idiot!_ What part of 'lure it to the depression' did you have trouble with? Now it's just going to regenerate again!"

"It was attacking you."

"Well imagine that, an Angel attacking an Eva. Obviously that was how I was going to keep it from ignoring me and just heading toward the city."

"You wouldn't have succeeded," Kaworu said. "Four kilometres, without you hurting it or it killing you?"

"Firstly, yes I would have, because I'm the top pilot around here."

"That doesn't make you invincible."

"Secondly, shut up. Thirdly, if by some miracle it did somehow get the upper hand over me, _that_ is when you're supposed to step in, not before, not while my plan is obviously completely intact."

"Um," said Shinji.

"Remember point two, Third?"

"It did have the upper hand. It hit you."

"You might consider a love tap like that a hit, but I most certainly do not."

"Children," Misato said wearily. "Report back for recovery and debriefing. We'll get it next time. Hyuga, finish up here, then send me the paperwork."

She trudged into her office, slumped back into her chair with a groan, and then groaned again, seeing Kaji behind her door, pointing a gun at her.

"Your situational awareness is terrible," he said, putting it away.

"What do you want?"

"To help, of course."

"Of course."

"Asuka and Shinji beat the seventh by synchronising to each other and the song. If a trick works once, why not try it twice?"

"Because I don't have a fourth room, and also Asuka will go on a murdering spree if I make her room with both Shinji and Kaworu."

"Homo sapiens, 200,000 BC – 2015 AD: killed by a lack of apartment space."

"Them's the breaks, huh? But even if I did have the salary to afford a decent place, you know I'd just spend it on booze. You know, you probably have space, with your bottomless Seele expense card."

"I prefer not to sleep in the same building as Asuka," he said, shivering.

"Can't keep your hands off her?"

"I can't keep _her_ hands off _me_. I wish you'd hurry up and hitch her and Shinji."

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about."

"Right. Anyway, I wasn't thinking the dance routine. You don't want specific muscle memories, you want them to learn how the others move. Have them play music together."

"Dancing the seventh to death was one thing, but this …"

"I'm serious," said Kaji. "They'll get familiarity with each other's natural rhythms. They already did it the other day. Give it a try; I'll bet you a drink we get results by the next battle."

Misato picked up a pen and twirled it around her fingers. "You're on."


	6. Muriel, and Shlishi ben Lailah

The Angel swum along, a dark blur under the surface of the water, and then broke it, revealing itself as a towering orange-red figure, with six stumpy legs, four massive claws, the core under its eyes, and thick chitinous armour over everything. Even before the water finished running off its shell, a squad of mixed bombers, fighters, and VTOL craft split up to drop their payloads. Their bombs and bullets splashed harmlessly off walls of prismatic light, and the Angel beat its claws against its body in defiance. A mote of light brightened around its core for a moment, before lancing out and through a gunship, blasting it to the ground. The Angel turned to follow the rest of the squad, and the light charged again.

A red blur charged it from the side and swung a giant halberd around, cutting through its AT Field. The beam of light went wide, and the Angel turned to face the Eva. It raised its foreclaws, each larger than a naval destroyer, and clapped them together, creating a spherical shockwave of AT energy; the Eva raised its Field, and the shockwave rolled past, throwing up sand and debris. The Angel took a swipe with one foreclaw; the Eva rolled under, buried its weapon in the claw up to the shaft, and swung around on top of it. It drew two prog knives and jammed then into the top of the claw, cutting through the Angel's thick armour plating. Then the Angel's upper claw clipped it on the shoulder, knocking it off and to the ground and pulling its power cable loose. It brought its other heavy claw up and down on the Eva like a hammer on an anvil.

At the last moment, a tungsten needle turned the air to plasma and smacked into the claw, knocking it off course. The red Eva turned to follow its slipstream, back to the waving purple Eva. The purple Eva dropped its coilgun, caught a pallet gun dropped by one of the circling supply planes, and charged, firing from the hip. The Angel brought a heavy claw up as a shield and charged its light attack again, then let it loose.

It hit the red and purple Evas' combined AT Fields and bounced away into space. The red rolled back to its feet, stuck its power cable back in, pulled the prog halberd out of the Angel's claw, and brought it down on the armour plate over the elbow joint; chitinous material cracked and fell apart. The Angel brought its other claw up for another hammer blow; the purple Eva grabbed a hold and rode its momentum onto the first claw, seized the red's prog knives, and jumped off, drawing them down the claw and slicing two long gashes into its armour. The red leapt after with a brutal horizontal chop and peeled a long strip of armour off; the purple turned and opened up point-blank with its rifle, blasting the claw to mush.

The Angel roared and beat its three remaining claws together, then brought them down all at once on the Evas. The red Eva dived backward out of range; the purple slipped and blocked with its gun, and the blow bent the gun into a U. The Eva dropped it, pulled its prog knife, and sprinted directly for the Angel's core, dodging around its remaining heavy claw.

One of the smaller claws swung round and caught it about the chest, sending it into the ocean with a colossal splash. The Angel turned to finish it off, but the red Eva ran forward again and fired its spike cannons. They barely made it through the AT Field, never mind its thick armour, but got the Angel's attention. It charged its light attack again; the red raised its own AT Field. The energy discharge was too bright to look at, and overwhelmed the red's defences.

Six kilometres away, a woman with hair so black it looked almost purple barked an order. Guided missiles flew out of MRLs around the beach and converged on the Angel, throwing up enough smoke and dust to block out the sun. Artillery fired not shells but balloons full of sodium azide, potassium nitrate, and silicon dioxide, which blew up into scale replicas of the Evas, all around the Angel; the Angel turned and punctured them with slashes of its claws and blasts from its energy cannon. The red Eva took the opportunity to stagger back and rearm, shaken but not beaten.

The purple Eva was back on its feet, a needle gun in its hands, and moved next to the red. The red caught a repeating rocket launcher from a dropship. The Angel lumbered forward, out of the smokescreen and field of burst balloons; the red took careful aim and fired. The Angel brought up its heavy claw to block; the purple rolled forward and fired four precise tungsten needles under the opening, hitting its four frontal legs at the knees and crippling it.

The Angel reared up, then stretched its claws out further than they'd gone before. The purple rolled out of the way of the heavy claw, but an upper claw caught its power cable and severed it. The Angel raised its limb stump, and a new heavy claw sprouted out with a gush of orange-red fluid. Its mote of light charged again and punched through the red's AT Field, scorching it; the red rolled backward, and the light overshot and melted its cable. The Angel slammed its heavy claws together, making another AT shockwave; this rolled over the Evas, snapping the purple's arm, leaving them both struggling weakly. It roared in triumph.

An orange Eva dropped from the sky and landed in a crouch, then straightened. It pulled from its pylons two longer prog knives, more like short swords, and walked forward.

The Angel charged another light blast; the three Evas raised their hands as one, and a triple AT Field sprung into existence and deflected it. A heavy claw swung up; the red Eva rolled, leapt at it from the side, and chopped through its joint, bypassing the armour and neatly severing the claw. The orange Eva sliced through the Angel's Field with an efficient one-two cut. The upper claws came down at the orange; it rolled out of the way, carving into one with quick slashes. The light cannon charged again.

The purple Eva aimed, one-handed, and landed five needles in its core. The first glanced off, the second and third cracked it, the fourth knocked out a chunk, and the fifth smashed it to pieces. The orange and red Evas dived back to the purple; they raised their AT Fields to full power in unison, a moment before the Angel turned into a gigantic cruciform explosion.

…

Misato met the three pilots in the debriefing room with Rei, Kaji, and a broad grin. "That was _brilliant_," she said. "That was the cleanest battle we've had yet. Well done, guys."

Asuka basked in the praise. Shinji smiled weakly. His arm was in a sling, and the sympathetic pain was just winning against the adrenaline high. Kaworu smiled too, but it was the same one he wore when his tram was late.

"Kaji's training really worked," Asuka said, beaming at him. "Who would've thought that just playing music together would have made such a difference?"

This was perhaps generous, because they had still had regular synch tests and simulated battles, but it was true that the three of them had been 'encouraged' to keep playing together. Asuka had been much more enthusiastic once Misato mentioned that it was Kaji's idea, and, once she realised it was an opening for her to prove she was better than Smarmy, she had even allowed him to shelve the violin and play four hands pieces with her, although she made him take the bass rather than the melody. Shinji happily stayed in the background with his cello, just so long as his part wasn't completely trivial.

Kaji shrugged. "The dance routine worked pretty well, so this wasn't too hard to think of. You did well, Asuka."

"How come I never see you any more?" Asuka pouted. "Did you even watch the battle?"

"Well, yes, I just …"

"His job's been keeping him away," Misato said with a bland smile. It was sort of true: she kept him away because of his job. "Anyway, I want to treat you all to a nice lunch as a reward."

"Although she won't be around for dinner," Kaji said, pleased.

Misato glared at him for a moment, before her face softened. "Rei, you're invited too, and do you know where Mogami wandered off to?"

"No," said Rei.

"Ah well. I'll make it up to her later. Hit the showers and I'll meet you at the monorail in thirty. Nagisa, could I have a word?"

They waited until the others filed out.

"What is it, Major?" Kaworu asked.

"I've never sat down and had a chat with you," she said affably. "I don't know anything about you. A commander should know something about the people she's working with, shouldn't she?"

"To establish trust," he said, returning the smile. "Certainly."

_So that's how you want to play it. __Fine._ "I know that you met Asuka and Mogami at Berlin. What have you been doing since Little Third Impact? We could have used you here much earlier; at the very beginning, we only had two pilots, and neither was really up to it."

"I assume the Marduk Report didn't mention me because my Eva wasn't completed until recently, the same reason Asuka wasn't here from the beginning. I've been living on one of my father's properties. A villa in Neuburg-Schrobenhausen," he switched to a German accent for the name, throwing Misato off the rhythm of his speech, "a district of Bavaria, Germany. It's fairly close to Munich. I had private tutors there. My father is very wealthy."

"That must have been nice. Do you miss it?"

"It was more picturesque than Tokyo-3, but I prefer seeing so many people to its solitude."

"One shouldn't be lonely for too long," she said, nodding. "What about your friends? Do you keep in contact with them?"

"I never had many friends. My father thought a designated pilot should focus on his studies."

"What about Asuka and Mogami?"

"Yes for Chitose," he said. "We're very close, although we were kept apart because of the risk of another accident that might kill two pilots. But I believed Asuka was killed in Little Third Impact. It was before instant messaging was invented, so I had no way to check. It was a pleasant surprise to find out she was alive."

Misato spotted the lie immediately. Asuka said she had left before the explosion; he knew she had survived. He had deliberately avoided contacting her, and Chitose must have too. Although he was right about the IM; perhaps they had wanted to call her, but Seele hadn't given them her contact info.

"You've definitely been putting a lot of work into your training with Asuka and Shinji."

"They say that it counts as play when you're having fun."

"True. What do you think about Rei? I haven't noticed you spending any time with her."

"I don't get the impression she much likes me. I wouldn't want to intrude."

"That's very accommodating of you. She's been having fun with Mogami." For some value of 'fun'; Chitose kept dragging her along on excursions to random parts of Tokyo-3, with Rei never venturing an opinion about any of it. "Is that why I haven't seen you with Mogami, either?"

"I don't want to annoy Ayanami, not when she's been so kind to Chitose in letting her share their apartment, and Mrs Bauer never much liked her, so it seems disrespectful to invite her around to my place."

"I can see that. I haven't had a chance to talk with her either. Do you know what she's been doing since Berlin?"

"I could tell you, but you ought to ask her. It wouldn't be polite to discuss her behind her back."

_Interesting._ If they were really both with Seele, he should have recited her cover story. If Chitose had defected as Ritsuko thought, he should have had propaganda to tell against her. "I had the impression she and your father were on bad terms?"

Kaworu smiled, as of one laughing at a private joke, or a massive understatement. "They are. She was furious that he forbade her from coming here. He was furious that she rebelled against his will. He has declared a family feud against her."

"But you still like her?"

"We have a history together. One doesn't throw that away. So I owe it to her to keep her confidences." He interlaced his fingers, in a manner eerily reminiscent of Ikari Gendo, and leant forward. "Major Katsuragi, may I assume that you're curious about Mrs Bauer and those Seele men, and the Himalayas facility?" Her smile slipped, and he leant back. "If you're worrying about Ayanami or the other pilots, you needn't. Her grudge is against Seele, not Nerv. They wouldn't approve of me saying this, so please don't tell them I did, but she won't be any sort of threat to you or anyone else helping defeat the Angels."

…

Asuka led the way to the showers, still glowing with euphoria. She babbled excitedly about the battle, but Shinji just didn't get it; he thought of piloting like it was a chore, not an honour or a badge of superiority. She decided not to let him get to her and just skipped into the change rooms, stripped out of her LCL-sticky plugsuit, and opened the shower curtain. Chitose was inside.

"Asuka-chan!"

"Gaah!" Asuka cried, recoiling and wrapping her arms around herself. "What the hell are you doing here, you perverted bisexual psychopath?!"

"I wanted to congratulate you on the battle!" Chitose beamed. "They said I was too distracting in the bridge and threw me out, so I thought I'd wait here for you."

She was fully clothed; the asymmetry of the situation seriously bothered Asuka. "They were right, and why are you hiding in the shower stall where you'd only see me after I'd undressed, and _why are you staring at my boobs?!_"

"I'm trying to work out why you're bothered. Why are you? I'm a girl too; I already know pretty well what breasts look like, although I suppose they are a bit bigger than mine, except the areolae, but I got a glimpse before you covered up, and anyway, what does it matter if I saw? I mean, what I see is internal to me, right, it doesn't affect you at all."

"Wouldn't you mind if someone was staring at you naked?!"

"Well … let me think about that. If I didn't _know_, logically I couldn't mind, but if they were standing right opposite me talking to me … if it was another girl, I don't think I really would. If it was a boy … has he ever seen a naked girl before? Because I'm curious about what they're like in the flesh, so to speak, and so it'd only be fair if they were curious about girls, so I –"

Asuka swore in German, wrapped her plugsuit around herself like a towel, bodily threw Chitose out of the shower stall, and yanked the curtain back in place. "I swear to God, if you're still there when I'm done, I won't be held accountable for my actions." She poked her head out. "And if you flash Shinji I will _kill_ you. He's perverted enough as is. Find someone else. Got it?" Without waiting for a response, she pulled the curtain back and stood under the hot spray, her good mood wasted.

Chitose left to find Misato in her office, filling in the more urgent post-battle paperwork. Misato jumped a little and reached into her jacket as Chitose approached.

"Hello again," Chitose said. "Well done today."

"Ah – thank you," Misato said, relaxing only slightly.

There was an awkward pause.

"Are you upset about being left out of the group training?" she asked. "Trying to coordinate people gets harder as more people join, and we don't have an extra Eva for you to pilot anyway, so …"

"No, no, that's fine," Chitose said, meaning it. "I was never any good at music anyway, nothing like the others. It's logical, and I don't mind Kaworu being Unit-03's pilot, not if he's going to work better with the others. Actually, I wanted to ask you if I could train solo in the Pribnow Box. I wouldn't be as good in the field as Kaworu because I wouldn't be coordinated with the other pilots, like he is, but I still think I ought to practise a bit, you know, just so I can be an effective reserve. I've barely been in an Eva, and I wasn't as nimble as I am in my own body, not like Asuka or the boys. My synch rate was too low. I think I could improve a lot with training."

Misato hadn't been comfortable with the odd girl, not after whatever it was she had done to those Seele agents, and Kaworu had proven a competent pilot. If he was a spy for Seele, at least he hadn't done anything overt yet. On the other hand, he did say she should pilot; if she trusted him, she should logically trust her, too.

"Mogami … why do you pilot Eva?"

Frankly, she was surprised the girl was still in Tokyo-3 at all. Seele could have sent more agents or raised a fuss, but presumably they'd decided she wasn't worth the hassle. That, or they'd worked out some way of manipulating her where she was. That thought was disquieting.

Chitose blinked at the question. "Because it's the only thing that can defeat the Angels and prevent Third Impact and the end of the world, which would kill everyone, including me. Does Eva do anything other than that?"

"No, but … Rei piloted because she likes to do what the Commander tells her. Asuka does because she wants to prove that she's the best."

"Oh. Well, I've never met the Commander and I don't think I'd care what he thought if I did, and I know I'm not the best. Is that a problem?"

Misato frowned. Someone like Chitose shouldn't be better-adjusted than her charges, or herself for that matter, but on the other hand, it meant she was probably more reliable. Shinji would leave if his relationship with his father degraded too much, Asuka had a serious glass jaw, and Kaworu was probably a ticking time bomb, depending on what Seele had planned. In any case, she wouldn't be a threat inside Unit-03; Ritsuko had 'forgotten' to remove the bomb from its plug when she synchronised Kaworu.

"No, not at all. You're right; I meant to ask you to keep training a month ago, but we've been flat-out getting the three lead pilots to work together." And because she had assumed that Seele would take her, so the training would be wasted, but apparently Seele had decided to let her alone for the time being. "We're busy with clean-up right now, but I'll schedule you some time soon. Some with Shinji and Asuka, too, because they need to be able to work with you, and maybe we could see whether you can synch with Units-00 and -01, too, and then give you time with Kaworu."

"Thanks! Although if Asuka doesn't want anyone else in Unit-02, I'd prefer to stick to Unit-03, if you don't mind. The test and prototype models are part Lilith, so they're likelier to go berserk. That's one experience I don't really want to have."

Misato interpreted this as meaning she was worried Kaworu would sabotage her in the field, and she probably had reason to think that. She made a mental note never to field them together. "You know what the Evas are made of?"

Chitose blinked. "Isn't it obvious that they're made from Adam? I mean, Angels and Evas both have AT Fields, but nothing else does; anyone would guess they come from the same source. And I watched the footage of the battle against the third Angel; a purely Adamite Eva would never go berserk to protect a human. You can swap out the first-generation robot parts, so the only reason the prototype and test model would be different from the production models is that they have different biological components; and Lilith is the only real alternative."

"I meant, you know about Adam and Lilith?"

"Seele told me about them years ago. Kaworu, too. Why, don't the other pilots?"

"The Commander likes to keep high operational security. I only found out recently myself."

"Shouldn't pilots of all people know about that?"

"Arguably, but that information is restricted. I guess his thinking is that pilots don't need to know, and they're a potential leak."

"A leak to who?" Chitose asked, then, with what might have been sarcasm, "the Angels?"

Misato sighed. So now she had two insubordinate girls to deal with. "It's not my call. But you did sign a nondisclosure agreement."

Chitose frowned.

"I'll let you know when I've got your time in the Pribnow Box organised. By the way, I offered to take the other pilots out to lunch to celebrate. Do you want to come?" No reason not to be nice. "The other four are all coming."

"Thanks, but there's an art exhibition that's just opened this morning, and I want to get there early."

"You like art?" Misato asked, surprised.

"I don't know; I've never been to a gallery before. But it sounds interesting."

…

Toji and Kensuke had wordlessly decided not to walk Shinji to school ever since Asuka moved in, but they were still friends, and talked during breaks and went around the city together when he wasn't buttonholed by either Nerv duties or Asuka, who had seemingly got the idea into her head that he was her personal minstrel and chef. They found him during recess, two days after the battle.

"What was the Angel like?" Kensuke asked excitedly.

"Big and strong," said Shinji. "Didn't you say you had Section Two agents knocking on your door because you kept prying into classified information like this?"

Kensuke waved this aside. "I heard it barely got onto the beach. You must have really kicked its butt."

"You think?" said Toji, indicating Asuka, who was holding court with a bevy of other girls a few tables over.

"It's like it's no big deal any more, you know?" she was saying. "I mean there I was, first on the scene, did most of the fighting, screened for the finishing blow, barely even got my paintwork scratched, and everyone at Nerv's just like, 'So what?' Even the people who saw what the Angels did to Ikari and Ayanami before I got here are acting like they aren't a real threat any more, and when you get right down to it, they're probably right. Ever since I got here, it was only when I didn't have proper support that they even made it to the city, let alone to Nerv HQ."

A few tables past her was Kaworu. Shinji had invited him to sit with him and his friends a while earlier, but Toji had a problem with what he described as Kaworu's 'queer aura', although he didn't say it in quite so many words. Kaworu picked up on this anyway, but had accepted his lot gracefully, and instead sat with half a dozen blushing girls, while a few jealous boys looked on.

"Pilot Soryu's story is correct," he said. "She led the fight. I only joined in toward the end."

"So they only defeated the Angel after _you_ joined the battle, Kaworu-sama?" one of his girls asked. Tsuruko, who had pride of place beside him, shot the girl a warning glare, but Asuka, who was eavesdropping, interrupted.

She gave the girl her best look of contemptuous pity, like she did Shinji when she told him he was being replaced after the first battle with the seventh. "Yeah. Right. After Ikari and I did all the work, we let him take the credit for a shared kill. He'd look pretty pathetic if he'd just twiddled his thumbs for two entire battles, don't you think? It's not like he dealt the finishing blow or anything."

"I'm sure that doesn't matter," Tsuruko said, smiling blandly. "They say that behind every successful woman is a hard-working man, right, Kawo-rin?"

"Right. Although sometimes it's the other way round," Kaworu said, grinning at Shinji.

Shinji smiled back, and his gaze slid to the next table over, where Rei was sitting alone; she had a bento for once. Her eyes locked with his for a moment, and he quickly looked down, colouring.

"It's been … a lot better than it was when I first got here," he said to Toji and Kensuke, thinking how he ran away early on, and how isolated and worthless he felt. His mind turned away from it and back to the girls in his life, who were infinitely more confusing than Kaworu, Toji or Kensuke. The boys simply wanted friendship; Shinji wasn't sure exactly why anybody would want it from him personally, but he could accept it. The girls … Asuka alternately seemed to hate and depend on him, Rei was a mystery, and even Misato confused him sometimes. "It doesn't feel like I'm going to die every time."

"Was that other girl there too?" Kensuke asked. "I can't believe she was only here for half a day, and I missed her."

"I've barely even seen her since then," Shinji said truthfully; he'd seen her at a distance at a mall once, and she'd waved at him from a tram, but she seemed content to do her own thing. "I think there was some political reason why she isn't supposed to pilot, something to do with the UN? She hasn't been at any synch tests or anything. Although Misato says she's going to from now on."

"I can't believe they have so many pilots they can just ignore one of them," Kensuke groused. "Two, if you count Ayanami."

Shinji glanced at her again, and away: she was still staring at him.

"You should ask one of them out," Toji said unexpectedly. "Shinji could introduce you, right?"

"Er," said Shinji, trying to picture Kensuke and Rei, or Kensuke and Chitose. "I _could_ …"

"Why would I want him to?" Kensuke asked. "I mean, not that I wouldn't tap that" he nodded toward Rei, who had finally returned to her bento "with gusto, but come on."

Toji gave him a look. "You were so desperate for a date not so long ago, and then you had one disappointment and haven't tried again since."

"Yuki never called me back even once," Kensuke said.

"Maybe she had something else come up," Toji said quickly. "Point is, real men don't just give up. And they're both pilots, so they know about Eva, and that's about all you can talk about."

"It's not something _they_ can talk about, though. I'd just ask Shinji if he weren't blocked by about fifty NDAs. Besides, Rei isn't exactly the sort to talk … about anything."

Toji rolled his eyes. "Look, the city is full of gorgeous girls, and you're just letting them slip through your fingers because you're too much of a pussy to ask them."

"I'm not a pussy."

"Please. You're almost as much of a pussy as Shinji is, but he's _swimming_ in gorgeous girls because he's a pilot."

"I'm not a pussy," said Shinji. The other two boys ignored this.

"The main one's a psychopath and probably Satan himself," Toji admitted, "down to Earth in the form of a human female to murder us all in our beds, but she's still gorgeous, from a distance. Come on, at least go back on that website and try again. I guarantee it'll go better this time."

Kensuke gave him a look. "Okay, but I'm only doing this to get you to shut up," he said.

"That's what friends are for," Toji replied.

…

"Blue pattern detected! And it's the azure one again."

"Then it's time we finished this. Prep the Evas."

"Pilots are at the cages."

"Plugs inserted."

"Evas launch! Now, do you all remember the plan?"

"I lead," said Asuka, facing off against the yellow Angel, which was now both striped and speckled brown. She was unarmed. It lunged for her; she rolled to one side, then to her feet, ejected her power cable, and ran, the Angel hot on her heels. "Even at full power, I should have enough time to – unh!" The Angel tackled her from behind; she rolled with it, kicked it in the head, and kept running, this time zig-zagging as she went. "To make it to the crater from that N2 mine you used against the third, even though apparently it doesn't just get more armour each time, it gets faster, too."

Sprinting full-tilt, she managed a flying leap half a second before her plug went dark. The Angel chased after and pounced.

"That's when I jump in," said Kaworu, as he tackled the Angel, knocking it off-course and sending both of them tumbling down into the crater. "I then dispatch the …" He pulled his prog knife and slashed at the Angel; on paper, it should have been easy to bypass the hardened brown bands, but in practice, the blade slid over them, only making superficial cuts into its skin.

Shinji ran over to Asuka, carrying a spare power cable. "If Kaworu can't beat it single-handed, the plan was for me to assist, but powering Asuka back up will take five seconds, and three is better than two."

Asuka's plug lit back up. She got back to her feet and chased after the Angel; she and Shinji caught up to it just as it pinned Kaworu and began tearing at his armour with its steely paddle-claws. "With that taken care of, we're clear to pull the Angel off Smarmy's sorry backside …"

"… leaving me clear for the coup de grâce," Kaworu said, plunging his knife into where a dog might have had a sternum and slitting the Angel open lengthwise.

"And with Ritz having put the chemical equivalent of four tons of plastic wrap around that hole," Misato undertoned, taking the slide show out of fullscreen, "the clean-up crews managed to catch all of its residue and pump it into a bore hole, where Ritz will be able to study it and find out how to stop it from resurrecting again, or at least give us some warning the next time it tries."

Shigeru's voice interrupted her review, strained. "Major, I appreciate that you need to go over that, but can we please focus on the test for now?"

"There's a test?" Ritsuko asked, looking up from her laptop.

The first four Children were in their entry plugs for a routine synch test. So routine, in fact, that nothing much had happened for the past several minutes. Asuka's and Shinji's scores were ticking upwards, by a few hundredths of a percent per day; Kaworu's had risen to 83.3%, although occasionally it dropped back to 80 when he was tired.

"Ah! Sorry," Misato said, blushing and closing her laptop. "Although … wait, I'm not even technical, I'm only here to observe the pilots." She turned a stern look on the technicians.

"Sorry, I was just a bit distracted," said Makoto. "My shirts keep on going missing for some reason. I've lost five of them lately, okay?" he added defensively. Misato looked away.

"I've been trying to read up about psychology," Maya said, holding up a paper. "Sorry. I thought I could multitask better. I'll leave it for my free time."

Makoto snorted, very quietly. Senior Nerv personnel didn't get free time. They had either short backlogs of urgent work or long backlogs of urgent work. Besides, she'd been reading about that for months. He wasn't sure why she was so interested in doppelgängers rather than, say, anything actually relevant to Project E.

"Have you at least found how it's been resurrecting itself?" Misato asked Ritsuko.

"No. All my tests insist it's pure LCL," Ritsuko said. "Until I can find any evidence to the contrary, I won't make any headway, so I'm multitasking again to supervise the subs exploring Antarctica." She tilted her laptop forward to reveal a map of colours and contours. "The subs' AI is glitchy, and Magi isn't allowed to run other learning robots, not after the … incident. They wandered in circles for a week before I started micromanaging them."

Misato sighed and activated the pilots' comms. "Take five, okay, guys?" she said.

"Sure," said Asuka, "we'll stop sitting here, and instead we'll, oh, I don't know, maybe trying sitting here, how does that –"

Misato clicked the link off. "How's that going, anyway, Ritz?" she asked. "It's been six weeks now."

"A continent is a big place, and it was hit worse than anywhere by Second Impact. The maps from before then are all completely outdated. We have to remap everything from scratch, and the Adamite LCL contamination is too inimical for human exploration, so we have to use robots, and they're idiots. If there is an Angel there, we could find it in five minutes or five months."

"Five months?" asked Misato. "They might just about all have attacked by then."

"They might not. Assuming there is an Angel there now, I estimate a fifty percent chance that we find it before it hatches."

Inside his entry plug, a new face appeared in Kaworu's HUD. He clicked off all recording and other transmissions.

"Good afternoon, Schätzchen," he said, giving his sincerest smile.

"Hello, love," Chitose singsonged. "Have you missed me?"

She was apparently sitting on a safety rail in a mall, a new bottle of brown hair dye and another of hair conditioner in her lap. He could see a shop front behind her, and passersby glaring at her for using video chat in public; she seemed quite unaware of them. While they talked, both relaxed in a way they never did around anyone else; among other things, their language drifted between Japanese, German, English, and slang which no-one else alive understood.

"More than anything. Why didn't you call earlier? Say, when I had my phone, rather than a heavily encrypted military channel?"

"I wanted to see whether I could," she smiled back. "I've learnt a _lot_ while you've been napping in there. And you're always busy."

"I'd visit you if you asked."

"Definitely tempting," Chitose said with a wink, "but not with Rei in the apartment. I also didn't call because I was scared of something, but I really have to know. I can't put it off any longer."

"Yes, Schätzchen?"

"What did Seele tell you to do?" she asked.

"Aren't you in a public space now? And you know what they told us."

"Don't worry about that, love. No-one's close enough to me to overhear what you say, the line's secure, and everyone already knows I know about them. And I meant recently, since I got here. And are you going to obey them?"

"Ah," he said. "You've been afraid that they would ask me to kidnap or kill you?"

"I really hope they didn't," she said earnestly. "Either you'd refuse and they'd kill you, or you'd try to do it, and I'd have to kill you. Please tell me it's not like that, I don't want you to die."

"You won't have to kill me, Schatz," Kaworu said soothingly. "They told me to stay out of your way. Something about you being a bad influence. I'll obey, for now. I don't want to die yet either, and it wouldn't be a good idea to make a scene."

"I'm glad to hear that," she said. "Is this out of loyalty, or just because it's convenient?"

"Yes," he said, winking.

"Oh, do come on. You of all beings should be showing them what Free Will can do, _Tabris_."

"Free will is tricky. It does what other people want, but only half the time. I will promise you, though, that my will is never going to be that you are hurt."

Chitose laughed. "Well. Maybe not _never_, love."

She took a hold of a lock of hair and examined it. It was waist-length; she'd never liked cutting it, but Seele had made her. She'd stopped after leaving them, and the ends were splitting. The chemist who sold her her dye had told her to take better care of it; to use conditioner and cut the split ends out.

He grinned wryly, knowing she was still paying attention to him. "And how about yourself? What are you planning to do? I'm a little surprised you're still in the city; I would have thought it'd be too dangerous for you."

"I can deal with the danger."

"That's the opposite of reassuring, coming from you."

"This is the City of Science," she said. "I've seen more every day since I got here than I did in all the time since Berlin. And my friends are all here. This is where I belong. And where else could I go that Seele couldn't reach? Besides, I need to stay here as a reserve for Unit-03, in case Seele ever pulls you out at short notice."

"True. So you're happy where you are?"

"I'm almost blissful," she said. "I'm seeing so much and piloting Eva. There's not much else I want, and nothing else I could really have anyway."

"Are you piloting Eva because you have to, or to annoy Seele?" Kaworu asked.

"Yes," she replied, sticking out her tongue. "But seriously, it's because there are all these wonderful things in the world, and there won't be if the Angels destroy it. It's not rocket science. Speaking of which, did you know that rocket science isn't actually all that difficult? I mean it blows up if you do it wrong, but there are equations that make it really easy to know what will happen. It's not like psychology or economics or art. Speaking of which, art is weird. I should look into it more. Some of it's really interesting, but there was this canvas that was just a red square on a white background. How is that art?"

"Heh. Schatz, you –"

"Okay," interrupted Misato's voice and face, "are you ready to get back to it?"

On the first syllable, Kaworu hung up on Chitose. She nodded, put her phone away, and resumed window shopping.

At the other end of the plaza, Kensuke waited. He was ripped by a peculiar emotional cocktail of apprehension, excitement, lust, guilt for some reason, and flutterings of absolute terror. Sakura had been a so-so match on paper, but she had still agreed to meet him, and if her display pic was honest, she was _impossibly_ hot, like a purely Japanese version of Asuka. Her bio didn't sound anything like Asuka, though; she seemed nice but quiet, and like she had a personality with features other than ego and competitiveness.

"Hello? Mister Kensuke?"

He turned and did a double-take. If anything, her photo didn't do her justice.

"S-Sakura," he said, giving a nervous twitch which might charitably have been taken as a bow. "Uh – hi."

"So, uh," she said.

"Yeah," he said.

"Um. Do you want to. Um. Do something?"

"I guess?"

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know. What do you want to do?"

"I don't mind. You pick."

"I don't really have any preferences," said Kensuke, the list of eight possible fallback activities for in case things got awkward vanishing from his mind without a trace.

"Well … if you really don't mind either way … there's a flower shop two blocks down I wanted to visit," said Sakura.

"Um," said Kensuke, who had no interest whatsoever in flowers. "That sounds fun."

"I was thinking about buying some camellia," she said, suddenly coming out of her shell. "What colour do you like for them? White, red, yellow? My favourite's red."

"Really? Mine too."

"I've probably got enough amaryllis," she said; Kensuke made a mental note to find out what amaryllis and camellia were. "And too many yellow tulips and primroses. They don't really look so good with all the cactus flowers, but I've never been able to grow chrysanthemums, I must have had a hundred of them die. I cry every time. Do you know how to make them survive? I've tried everything, but I just can't make them work. I should show you my garden so you can decide properly."

…

AidaK: i swear, she would not shut up. youd think you couldnt talk for four hours straight about flowers, but youd be wrong.

SuzuharaT: why didnt you just talk about something else

AidaK: i tried! she just clammed up until i let her go back to flowers. i thought she was going to cry.

AidaK: forget it. im giving up on girls. nothing but kaiju manga for me until im thirty.

SuzuharaT: whatever happened to that big inspirational speech you gave the class rep

AidaK: that was before i realised girls are more trouble than theyre worth.

SuzuharaT: you just got some bad ones ask shinji

SuzuharaT: not about devil girl obviously

SuzuharaT: shes a hopeless case

SuzuharaT: but misato or rei or that other pilot chick

SuzuharaT: she wasnt a total babe but worth a look 7 or 8 if reis a 10

SuzuharaT: and she talks and doesnt slap you for no reason so that has to even out anyway

AidaK: okay, fine, will you shut up already?

AidaK: IkariS

IkariS: What?

AidaK: are girls worth it?

IkariS: I found two pairs of Misato's panties in the rice cooker yesterday morning, sweaty, reeking of beer, and one of them was spattered in what I choose to believe was soy sauce.

IkariS: You tell me.

SuzuharaT: you did

SuzuharaT: do you have them now

IkariS: What? No, I put them in the laundry.

IkariS: That's what normal people do with dirty clothes.

SuzuharaT: you shinji are officially hopeless

Shinji rested his head against his hand. It was all very well for Toji to be fixated by girls, but he hadn't had to do their laundry for the past eight months. It tended to erode their mystique.

Asuka turned around. She could hear the tapping of Shinji's fingers on his keyboard. She knew he wasn't taking notes, not if his usual work ethic was any indicator, so that meant he was messaging those other idiots.

SoryuA: HorakiH the stooges are goofing off again.

HorakiH: They're using a private channel. Can't you just ignore them until recess?

SoryuA: no. it's annoying. aren't you annoyed?

HorakiH: Constantly.

Hikari sighed silently, and thought about how to balance her duties to the class, her loyalty to Asuka, and her desire to not get into yet another pointless fight, but life interrupted her: four mobile phones chimed at once.

The teacher cut himself off mid-sentence, and there was a moment's silence but for the sounds of the pilots scraping their chairs back, and the ever-present chirping of cicadas. Asuka left first, looking excited; then Shinji, optimistic; Rei, as inscrutable as ever; and lastly Kaworu, quietly confident. Once they were out the door, Toji made to stand up, but Hikari stopped him.

"Suzuhara! The evacuation sirens haven't gone off yet. Stay in your seat."

"Come on, Class Rep," he said. "What, do you think they're going to a company lunch?"

"The evacuation procedures exist for a reason. We have to be orderly and wait for the signal. There can't be a panic, and the pilots need priority to get to their Evas. Wait!"

The teacher nodded, so they waited in silence, and waited, and waited, but the sirens never rang.

…

Makoto was waiting for the pilots outside the change rooms, and stopped them from entering.

"You won't need your plugsuits," he said.

"If Akagi expects me to go in naked again …" Asuka said, a warning glint in her eyes.

"No! God no."

Asuka narrowed her eyes to slits. "What exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"… Look, please, there's not going to be any fighting. It's nowhere near here yet."

"Then shouldn't we try to intercept it before it can land on the city?" said Shinji. "You know, minimising collateral damage and all?"

"It's … it'll be easier if we only have to go over it once, okay? Major Katsuragi's waiting in the briefing room."

Asuka snorted and tossed her hair, and they followed the tech.

"Where's the Weird Girl, anyway?" she asked.

"I don't know," Makoto frowned. "The message went out."

Four kilometres away, Chitose sat in the city library with a contented smile on her face, reading a book about herpetology. On the wall above her was a sign reading 'Please turn off your mobile phone'.

"She's only a reserve now, though, so it probably doesn't matter too much; we can fill her in later. Here we are."

He led them into a dark room in which a real-time video feed was projected onto one wall, tracking what had to be an Angel across a stretch of farmland, because no human would ever make anything that looked like it. It had a single red jewel at its centre; around this was a purple disc studded with flashing green lights and eyes with yellow irises, and bordered by a wide, bright blue rim. The disc was oriented like a unicycle's wheel, with the core exposed on both sides. It had six orange legs, double-segmented, long and thin like a spider's; three growing from the left side of the disc, their sockets arranged in an equilateral triangle pointing down, and three on the right, arranged in a triangle pointing up. The entire effect was like a cross between a beetle and a Ferris wheel.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever seen," Asuka declared, saying what they were all thinking, "and I saw the tenth Angel up close."

There was no sound, giving an odd dreamlike quality to the video. Aircraft swirled overhead, strafing it and dropping the odd bomb. It ignored them and rolled along at a good clip on its rim, which could rotate independently of the purple disc, occasionally touching one leg tip to the ground for balance or to change direction and go around a hill.

Misato and Dr Akagi were sitting at the back of the theatre, along with Maya, who was controlling the surveillance satellite. Akagi spoke up. "The target appeared in California's Central Valley sixteen minutes ago. Second Branch picked it up. The US Government demanded military intervention. I suppose they feel like showing us how it's done."

Misato shrugged. "It's their taxes. It's heading west, presumably to the coast, where it will swim across the Pacific to here. We don't have enough time to intercept it over there before it reaches the ocean. If it floats, we could consider attacking it with C-type equipment, but otherwise, or if it's too agile in water, we'll have to fight it on land, here. Right now, we're observing it so we can come up with a plan."

"I have a plan," Asuka undertoned, as the pilots filed forward to sit down, "we don't ask it for fashion advice."

"We'll have to attack from one side or the other to get at the core," Kaworu observed. "Probably only one, so we only have to deal with three legs rather than six. I should think the right side would be weaker; the left has two raised legs, which can probably strike faster and harder."

"Or we could split up and hit both at once, with one of us as a distraction," Asuka argued. "That thing's a bit shorter than an Eva, isn't it? We'll get in each other's way if we all converge on one side, there's not enough room."

"That's what we have support for," Kaworu replied. "Two of us will grab its legs and pull them out of the way, artillery will hit the other side, and the third will destroy the core."

"You're assuming it just lets us, Smarmy. The other three legs will be completely untouched; normal weapons are useless against the Angels. Much better to spread out so we can counter its response."

Rei touched Shinji's knee. They exchanged wordless glances, and she spoke up. "We do not know what it is capable of."

There was silence.

"Oh, shut up," Asuka said, without malice.

A shadow passed over the video frame. Maya frowned, zoomed the camera out, and panned west, over to the inundated ruins of San Francisco. It had been hit hard by the sea level rise of Second Impact; many of its skyscrapers still stood, but they were rusty and slowly falling apart. The shadow belonged to a massive carrier plane; it dropped a huge yellow package.

The room let out a collective gasp as, with a colossal splash, Eva Unit-04 landed on its feet.

"There's a _fifth_ Eva?" Shinji asked. "But who's piloting it?"

Misato made a note to ask the Commander exactly why there was a fully functional combat Eva being used for something other than defending the one city that every Angel attacked. And why she hadn't heard about it, and had no idea who its pilot was.

"Could that be the autopilot system?" she asked Ritsuko.

Ritsuko shook her head. "That never got off the ground," she said. "Synchronisation needs a human neural pattern. The Magi trio together can't emulate one in real time. And there are bandwidth and reliability issues if you try to do it remotely. There's a human in there."

"Any idea who?"

"None."

"It's deployed without a power cable," Misato noted. "Whoever it is, they're confident."

Maya zoomed in on Unit-04. Like -03, it was a repainted clone of Unit-02. It turned east to face the Angel, putting its back to the camera, which was in geosynch orbit south of Tokyo-3. She pulled back out to capture both it and the Angel in one shot. The Angel had been heading slightly south of it, but it lightly dragged one right leg along the ground, turning it onto a collision course with the Eva.

"This idiot better not steal my kill," Asuka said.

Unit-04's shoulder pylon opened, and it pulled a Progressive Knife. The blade glowed white, as the Angel accelerated forward, a gaudy neon blue blur from the front, throwing up sheets of water. At the last moment, the Eva dodged to the side and struck.

The Angel was much more agile than it looked. It stabbed a leg into the ground as an anchor and tacked round like a tetherball, spraying foam. It smacked into the Eva's arm and knocked the knife away; this spun in the air and splashed out of sight. The Angel rolled away to build speed, then made another hairpin turn back toward the Eva.

Unit-04 dived out of its way; the Angel swerved again and hit the Eva in the chest, knocking it end over end and into the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge, rusty from flooding and decades of disuse, shuddered, and bits fell off.

"Come on," Asuka murmured, leaning forward. "Fight it, you idiot, it's killing you …"

The Eva scrambled to its feet and tore out a long section of the bridge, holding it like a club. As the Angel came forward again, throwing up great froths of water, it swung the bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge, however, was never designed to be used as a mêlée weapon, and snapped from the g-force.

"Stupid rookie," said Asuka. "Don't …"

The Angel swerved to avoid where the attack would have gone, putting it side-on to the Eva. The Eva threw a punch; the Angel brushed it aside with an upper leg, then its bottom leg flicked out and pierced Unit-04's thigh, spattering purple ichor. A moment later, one of its upper legs punched through the Eva's shoulder.

"Don't –!"

It braced its upper-left leg against the Eva's chest, pulled out the upper-right, and then stabbed it through the Eva's breastbone. With a spurt of ruddy fluid and pieces of shattered machinery, the leg came through the rear armour plate over the entry plug.

The Angel pulled its legs free, then turned and rolled off into the Pacific Ocean, down and out of sight. The yellow giant slumped forward, falling to lie face down in the water; Eva hydraulic fluid, LCL, and what was left of the pilot swirled out. VTOLs gathered about it like vultures; emergency response teams scrambled out to see what they could salvage.

Shinji's eyes widened. That was what it would have looked like if he'd lost to the fourth Angel. Or the fifth, or the thirteenth. He didn't notice the look Rei gave him.

"Christ," Asuka said in German, as Maya ran from the room, looking green and holding her hand over her mouth. "So, uh, heh. I guess maybe we should stick to guns?"

"How long do we have before it makes it here?" Misato asked Ritsuko.

Ritsuko took Maya's computer and queried Magi. "Its cruising speed was an average of 629 kilometres per hour on the flat. Magi estimates a water speed of 61, so, assuming it takes a direct path along the ocean floor and doesn't change speed, we have five days, seven hours, and eleven minutes." She hit a key, and timer appeared on the screen and began counting down. "We won't be able to track it by satellite once it gets too deep to see, so plus or minus twelve hours." Upper and lower bound timers appeared around the mean estimate.

"Right. Then we need a plan, and soon." Misato thought for a moment, before springing to her feet. "Pilots, suit up and get to the Pribnow Box. We're going to simulate the battle and get some idea for what works and what doesn't. That includes you, Rei. Makoto, find the Commander and tell him we need reinforcements yesterday. Get me permission to field Rei, and tell him to get me Unit-04. Don't take no for an answer to either. Once that report is coming, call Reichner and get me a full status report on the disposition of all available UN troops. Ritz, have Magi analyse whether P-type armour could stop it. If it can't, find me something that can. Ibuki –" She raised her voice. "Ibuki! Get back here!"

The mousy tech peeked back in the door, still looking ill.

"I need you to enter its data into the sim engine. And find Aoba and some junior techs so we can run everything properly, do that first." She pulled out her phone and called the head of Section Two. "I need the Fifth Child down here now. _I'm ordering YOU to do it._ Now is _not_ a good time to argue with me. _Do it._" She hung up and strode from the room, her subordinates swirling about her. "Kaji? Kaji, you sneak, stop pretending you're not eavesdropping! Someone, find Kaji and send him to me. Aoba!" she said, as he appeared. "Call Admiral Kuznetsov. Give him the data on the Angel and have him deploy his forces to track it without engaging. We need to know if it changes velocity. The rest of you, prepare the Pribnow Box. Hustle!"

In less than a quarter of an hour, the pilots were inside the simulation bodies, ready to begin. A countdown was displayed prominently on the main monitor, with the Angel's expected arrival time and upper and lower bounds. Maya was the only tech available to run the sim; everyone else was either too junior or too busy.

"Are you ready yet?" Misato asked her impatiently.

She kept typing. "Uhm … ninety percent. It should be displayable. I'll load it and fix up the rest while you have a look around, hold on …"

She hit a button, and the three pilots were transported into Evas on a flat, featureless plain. Something similar to the Angel stood opposite them, except it was black-and-white except for the core, and boxy, with sharp orthogonal edges rather than the real thing's organic curves; flat surfaces rather than a mixture of biological and fractal textures.

"Magi's transcribing its appearance, range of motion, and behaviour. It'll take about two more minutes. The scale and general shape should be right."

The pilots approached. It was shorter than an Eva, at about forty-five metres, and the blue rim was about as wide as an Eva at the shoulders. The disc was concave, its width at the narrowest point like an Eva at the waist.

"So, I'm thinking we form a reverse crescent," said Asuka, running her hand over its core. "First and Third are recessed, me and Fourth forward to either side, everyone with pallet rifles. Fourth and I take out its AT Field, you two blast it and draw its attention. It goes for you and we take the core out with crossfire. Sound good?"

"Well, we're trying things out, aren't we?" said Shinji. "Let's see how it goes."

"Ibuki?"

"Okay," she said, and entered the scenario. The boxy Angel blinked out of existence, and was replaced by four pallet rifles. The pilots picked them up. "I'll leave the terrain flat for now, and we can try it on the coast or in the city later, see where you have the advantage." The Angel, now properly textured, appeared ten kilometres away, saw them, and began its advance.

Asuka waved the others into formation. She got down onto one knee and trained it on the approaching Angel. "Okay. First, Third. Hit it."

They opened up on it. The pallet rifles' ammunition had a muzzle velocity of almost twice the speed of sound, which was much less impressive when you realised that with their scale they could sprint at just under the sound barrier, and could actually give off local sonic booms because not all parts moved at the same speed. Still, the Angel was approaching head-on, and most of the bullets splashed off its AT Field.

"Fourth!"

Kaworu and Asuka raised their hands to tear its AT Field down. It put on a burst of speed, jackknifed right, and ran Kaworu down, bouncing off and going in reverse. It turned on a yen, braked next to him, and stabbed a leg through his neck.

"Oops," he said, as his plug went dark, rubbing at his neck. The Pribnow Box didn't require a full synchronisation, so they muted the pain feedback to a dull itch, but he still felt something.

"Eva down, pilot intact," narrated a junior tech.

The Angel turned and rammed Rei, knocking her into Shinji and sending both to the ground. Asuka leapt out to the side to fire at its core; it switched to her. Her bullets pinged off its rim. She feinted right just before it made contact, skipped left, and brought her rifle up to shoot it point-blank. It knocked the gun away with one leg; she caught another, holding it flush to her body, and the third skewered her.

"Reset," said Misato, and the Angel and their guns vanished. Asuka rubbed at her stomach, as the wound vanished over and the phantom pain ebbed away. Kaworu got back to his feet. "Right. What went wrong?"

"The AI cheated," Asuka declared. "It heard what my plan was."

"No, it didn't," Maya said. "If the Magi could make good plans on the fly from natural language like that, we wouldn't need half our staff."

"It was too fast," Kaworu volunteered. "I barely saw it coming before it had me."

"Head on, it is immune to bullets, even without its AT Field," Rei said. "Its outer rim overhangs its core."

"Rei and I were bunched up too much," Shinji offered. "And Kaworu's right, it was too fast. I tried to shoot at it when it was going for him, but it was going almost as fast as our bullets. Can it really move like that?"

"Its top sprint speed against Unit-04 was recorded at over eighteen hundred kilometres per hour," Misato said. "Five hundred metres a second, Mach 1.5. Expect it."

They all turned and looked at Asuka.

"Its legs are too powerful," she said grudgingly. "I could only just hold on to one of them with both arms. I think it was bracing itself with the ones on the other side, because all three on my side were off the ground at once."

"That's a good start," Misato said with approval. "So, what do we do to take those advantages away?"

"Slow it down somehow?" Shinji tried. "Maybe with those bolas we tried against the eleventh? But I think this one would just tear them apart, it's so strong."

There was a pause while they tried to think of something that could possibly work.

"Stairs," said Rei.

Everyone turned to stare at her.

"Stairs … oh, you mean the terrain!" said Shinji.

"As a wheel-based object, that makes sense," Misato said thoughtfully. "It's fast on flat ground, but on very uneven ground it would have to walk, putting you on even footing, pun not intended. If we engaged it around a ridge …"

"Specifically, I meant ledges," Rei clarified. "It has no known ranged abilities and is unable to fly; it did not retaliate to the aerial bombardment. If we sniped it from towers, it would be at our mercy."

Asuka gave her a disbelieving look. What had happened to the soulless automaton who obeyed all orders without question and who never volunteered anything?

Misato considered the idea. "We have platforms throughout the city that we could use for that," she mused. "There are more than enough, so you could get whatever angle you needed, and could bail out if it managed to bring one down. Which it probably would; always expect the worst. Maya, make a note to simulate what would happen if the Angel rammed one of those armour plates at full speed, but for now, set the battlefield to Tokyo-3 and let's try again."


	7. Ophan Akzar, and Kerubiel

Asuka towelled her hair dry, combed it straight, and wrapped her towel around herself, making sure to cover enough skin that if anyone accused her of immodesty she could just reply that Shinji was a pervert. She walked out into the kitchen, but it was empty. She paused and theatrically glanced from side to side to verify there was no-one there.

"_Where is everyone?!_"

Misato's door slid open, and she crawled out, her bed clothes dishevelled, hair everywhere. "Asuka. What the _hell_ are you shrieking about at seven thirty in the morning, when I was up until two a.m. last night?"

"Oh," Asuka said, "I'm so sorry that your beauty sleep takes precedence over defeating the Angels."

"It's not arriving for four days. If you scream again, I will schedule synch tests for you twice a day until every last one is dead."

Asuka pouted. "Well, excuse me for thinking we were going to be taking it seriously. Are we at least going to be training again today?"

"We have preliminary data; we need to arrange for the battle, and just running endless sims isn't going to help. If we need you at all today, it won't be until after school."

"I don't _believe_ this. We're going to be fighting for our lives in less than a week, and you want us to spend that time listening to that old windbag drone on about Second Impact?"

"You need to finish your educations, properly," said Misato. "That was true when you started piloting, it was true before the fifteenth appeared, and it's true now."

Even with their best efforts, the fifteenth Angel almost always managed to at least seriously injure one of them in the sims. Misato had sensed Shinji's and Asuka's morale dropping, and sent them home early; it wouldn't do if he ran away again, and they couldn't count on him to come back in the nick of time. As for Asuka, she was dangerously close to throwing a tantrum; it had manifested in her obsessively trying again and again, but it could as easily metamorphose into her refusing to get into the Eva at all. She would let them try again when they had a plan where none of them would die.

Asuka frowned, but Misato was inflexible about schooling. Instead she stomped off to Shinji's room and slammed the door open. "Hey, Idiot! I want breakfast. And don't think I'm going to let you off if you don't make me lunch today, either! Come on! Get up! And don't even think about taking that the wrong way."

Shinji uncurled and mechanically went to the kitchen. Asuka narrowed her eyes, but he didn't perk up at all while cooking, he barely seemed to notice Misato's customary teasing, and he walked to school with a slump in his step like she'd seen in the earliest videos of him from before she arrived (she watched those videos only because pilots ought to know about each other).

"Well?" she demanded at last.

Shinji looked at her, but kept walking. She stepped in front of him to block his path.

"Don't you _dare_ ignore me. I asked you what was wrong, Third."

"One of us is going to die," he replied.

She recoiled, but quickly regained her bravado. "Are you stupid? We won all of the last five sims."

"Were you counting how many times one of us was killed?" he asked. "Six times, in the last five. Even if we do win, we still lose. And that was if nothing went wrong. Something _always_ goes wrong."

"You're worrying too much," she said, although hearing that statistic shook her. At the time, she'd dismissed them in the heat of the moment, and assumed they'd probably just be incapacitation, like everything had been so far, but on the other hand, the Angel had specifically targeted Unit-04's pilot; like it knew exactly where the plug was. Six casualties from twenty pilot-sorties came to a thirty percent chance for each. "We still haven't finalised our plans. When we do, we'll do even better. It looks tough on paper, but we'll get it, just like we got all the others, and nobody died then. And what about the tenth, and that last one? Those were easy."

He gave her a look. "What about the thirteenth, eleventh, ninth, eighth –"

"Stop whining, Third." She stood aside, and they resumed walking in silence.

At length, Shinji spoke. "If one of us does have to die, I'd rather it was me than you or –"

Asuka slapped him, putting her hips into it. "_Don't_ you _dare,_" she said.

She glared at him; he stared at the ground. After a moment, she seized his arm and pulled him along.

"We are Eva pilots," she said. "We're the protectors of the human race. I've personally saved the world at least five times. That stupid Ferris wheel isn't killing anyone, not on my watch."

They walked in silence the rest of the way.

…

AidaK: shinji, whats wrong?

AidaK: come on. what happened yesterday? we waited for half an hour for the angel alarm, but there was nothing.

AidaK: and now here you are, looking like someone ran over your dog? i can put two and two together.

Shinji finally set his hands to his keyboard.

IkariS: There was an Angel. It's still coming.

IkariS: This one's going to be bad. Really, really bad.

IkariS: I don't think I'm coming back.

Kensuke's eyebrows rose. He opened a new window.

AidaK: excuse me, nagisa-san, but can you talk about what happened yesterday?

NagisaK: We got a preview of our next battle. Shinji took it badly. I don't really blame him.

AidaK: but youre going to win, arent you?

NagisaK: It is likely that the Angel is going to be destroyed, if that's the same thing.

Kensuke shook his head, wondering whether he'd reached the correct conclusion.

Hikari wasn't exactly a close friend of Shinji's, but she didn't dislike him, and his depression was rolling off him in waves. She weighed her responsibility to the class against her responsibility to her classmates.

HorakiH: Asuka, what's wrong with Ikari?

SoryuA: he's perfectly fine.

Asuka paused to reread that line. It wouldn't do if Hikari got the wrong impression.

SoryuA: other than being a spineless wimp as usual.

Hikari waited. Asuka had many positive traits, but patience was not one of them.

SoryuA: look. an angel's coming. he's scared.

HorakiH: I see. But aren't the Angels always coming?

SoryuA: not like this one.

HorakiH: You've won every time so far. You can do it again.

Asuka hesitated again.

SoryuA: yeah.

Hikari frowned and typed half of another message, and that was when the klaxons went off.

Asuka was on her feet in a moment, fishing in her bag for her phone. She got it just as it started ringing. "What are you doing?!" she yelled into it over the sirens. "You're supposed to give us time!"

Misato was on the other end; a moment later, the other pilots joined in the conference call. She had speaker on, and they could hear the entire bridge, shouting at one another in a panic. "There is no time! Get everyone away from the windows, then get down to the entrance but _stay indoors!_"

"What's going –"

"_NOW!_"

Maya's voice joined in, raised in panic. "Trajectory confirmed, it's heading right for the school! Twenty-eight seconds to impact! Twenty-five! Twenty-four!"

"Move away from the windows!" Asuka shouted at the class, then vaulted over her desk to the door. She glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see Rei grabbing Shinji's arm and pulling him along and Kaworu getting to his feet, before she turned and ran down the corridor. "What's it doing here already? We were supposed to have days!"

"Ritsuko was wrong, she said something about supercavitation – worry about that later, just run!"

Doors opened on either side of her, as classes prepared to evacuate. She angled for a staircase, slid down the railing, bounced off the wall where the stairs turned 180 degrees, staggered, saw Rei dragging Shinji to the stairwell with their phones pressed to their ears, ran ahead, and made it to the front door.

"Back! Get away from the door! Stand in a doorway and brace, like for an earthquake!"

"Impact in five seconds! Three! Two! One!"

There was a flash of orange light and a blast like a bomb, and the building shook. Mortar dust and loose tiles fell from the ceiling, the floor pitched like on a boat, and the walls tilted ominously. They heard masonry crashing, glass shattering, clanging metal, and someone crying out. Asuka banged her head against a door frame; she didn't realise, but a trickle of blood began seeping down her forehead.

She looked out the front door. The street outside, the buildings and cars and everything else she could see, all was drenched with shimmering blue fluid. It was thick on a truck across the road; the truck sizzled, folded in on itself, and dissolved. Blue mist slowly rose from the liquid.

Ritsuko's voice came on the line, competing with the ringing in Asuka's ears. "I'm looking via satellite feed. That looks like acid." Asuka bit back a 'Really?' "Don't breathe the fumes or let them near your eyes. There's too much of it on the roads; cars won't be usable. You'll have to go by foot."

"Jiriko Terminus?" Asuka asked, naming the nearest trans-Geofront station to the school. The pilots pulled up the hems of their shirts to cover their mouths, as makeshift gas masks.

"It looks like that was hit. It might still be passable, but I recommend going to Kyubei. It's six hundred metres further, but it was only lightly sprayed by the acid."

"Negative," Misato ordered. "Go to Jiriko. You'll only be safe once you're in the Geofront; you're sitting targets out there. Hyuga, get Reichner on the line. Tell him to load his VTOLs up with lime and dump it in the city to neutralise the acid."

"Target is preparing to fire again!" Maya cried. "Computing trajectories … one's heading for the school again! Twenty-nine seconds!"

"Come on!" Asuka said, and she and Rei broke out into a run.

"Wait," said Shinji, "where's Kaworu?"

"I'll worry about him," said Misato. "Go!"

…

Kaworu stood on the roof, in what he knew was a blind spot for geosynch spy satellites, behind an aircon unit. He watched the blue sphere approach with almost a flat trajectory. He could feel the AT Field resonating through it, preventing droplets from spraying off, keeping it a single coherent mass larger than a car moving at twice the speed of sound. A thrill of fear shot through his body, like it did whenever he was outside an active Eva; his eyes glowed red. He could hear his phone by his waist, chirping ineffectually.

"Impact in five seconds! Three! Two! One!"

Tabris raised his hand, and concentric octagons flashed before him and the school; the sphere burst apart and spattered across the street, dissolving everything it touched. Dozens of other blobs burst across the city, with a noise like a drum tattoo.

There was a gasp; he turned, and saw Hikari standing behind him, her hands to her mouth.

"Why aren't you evacuating?" Kaworu asked, his usual smile absent, as his eyes dimmed.

"I – I saw you going the wrong way," she said. "I – you – that's what happened when they fought the octahedron Angel, months ago. You're one of them, aren't you? You're an Angel."

"… Yes. I am the final Angel. Are you going to tell anyone?"

"What? I – no. You saved us." She pointed to the skyscrapers; even as they retracted, one had taken a direct hit, and looked like a newspaper which had been set on fire, left to burn, and only put out after half had been consumed. "I won't tell."

"I see."

His phone crackled. "One's heading for the school again! Twenty-nine seconds!"

"Angels can sense AT Fields," he said. "It's aiming for me. I'll hold it off while you evacuate. We'll talk later."

"But you –"

"Go!"

Hikari gave him one last look, then took off at a run.

Misato took over the phone. "Kaworu, where the hell are you?"

"I tripped against a desk and twisted my ankle," he said. "Give me a few minutes."

"You don't _have_ a few minutes, that school is going down. Get to Jiriko, stat."

If he went there, the Angel would sense his AT Field moving, and aim the next volley right at it, and maybe hit or cut off his fellow pilots, or possibly civilians. "I'll go as quickly as I can, Major," he said, and turned and walked as slowly as he could for the exit.

…

On the streets, dodging pools of the corrosive blue slime and pedestrians hurrying for the shelters, swerving around abandoned cars or jumping off their hoods when they were parked too close together, there was no time for thought or feeling, only for doing. Shinji followed Rei, Rei followed Asuka, Asuka ran for the station.

"Incoming! Raising armour plate for protection, brace!"

They dived behind the rising steel wall; a blue blob slammed into it behind them with a sound like thunder, eating away a chunk of it and sloshing across the street. As soon as the volley petered out, Asuka was back on her feet and running. She hopped over a fence, into the station. Ritsuko was right; there were puddles of acid everywhere.

The trans-Geofront platform was underground, accessible by a short corridor. Asuka skidded to a stop at its entrance. It had been hit; a patch of ceiling had fallen in, into a sizzling pool of acid too wide for them to jump. Rei and Shinji slowed to a stop behind her.

"Asuka?" asked Misato. "The tram's ready and waiting for you."

Asuka took a moment to catch her breath. "It's no good. The access tunnel's been hit, there's too much acid."

"Look," said Rei, pointing upward.

The tunnel was normally lit by a fluorescent tube bolted high along the left side; this had survived the attack so far, although the wiring apparently hadn't, as it had gone out.

"That thing can't possibly take our weight," said Asuka.

"Boost me," Rei said to Shinji.

He crouched down, and she wrapped her legs around his neck. He stood back up, trying to ignore the fact that an attractive girl had her thighs wrapped around his neck; she grasped, missed, and caught the light tube with her fingertips. It creaked against its bolts, but held.

Asuka and Shinji watched as Rei moved one hand and then the other, her feet scrabbling for purchase against the concrete wall, as she slowly made her way over the pool of acid. She dropped down and turned to face the others, ignoring the grime on her hands.

Asuka frowned. That girl really would stop at nothing. It wasn't so much that she was brave, as that she didn't even consider her own death to be a negative event. It was disturbing. Still, if Rei thought she'd beat her that easily, she had another think coming. "Right. My turn."

So she sat on Shinji's shoulders, and he helped her up to the light tube. Her hands were slick with sweat and grime by the time she was only halfway over, and her muscles trembled from the unfamiliar exertion. As a kid, she'd been happy to swing across monkey bars, but that was different. She could get a proper grip then, and also she didn't die when she fell off.

"Heads up!" Misato called from her bag. "Incoming in twenty seconds, there's one heading close to the station!"

"Asuka, hurry," Shinji pleaded.

"I know that," she said, too nervous to snap. Her sweaty hands slipped on the narrow plastic tube. She was still over the acid.

"Ten seconds."

"If it hits while you're still there …"

"Shut … up …"

"Three! Two! One!"

There was another crash as the acid bomb hit the station. The shockwave rippled through the station, through the wall, and snapped the light tube in half. Asuka dropped, with one foot over dry concrete and the other over the acid; she overbalanced, windmilled her arms, and caught Rei's wrist. Rei pulled her away from the puddle, just as the wall collapsed, blocking Shinji from their line of sight.

"Asuka!" he cried.

A few droplets of acid had sprayed onto Asuka's skirt and burned; in a panic, she tore the fabric off, leaving herself in her panties. The skirt fell in two pieces; she threw it away, crouched, and breathed deeply, fighting nausea. Rei answered into her phone rather than raise her voice. "We are both unhurt. The Second Child and I can reach the station from here. Ikari, can you?"

"I – no. There's too much rubble in the way, and even if I could get past it, it's too dark now, I'd step in the acid. You two go on ahead. I'll find another way."

Asuka raised her phone. "You'd better. I'm counting on having enough backup, for a change. I'll see you at Nerv, Third." She took off her mantle and wrapped it around her waist for modesty; as it did, she saw blood on her hand. She felt around and finally found more trickling down her forehead. She wiped at it.

"Right. See you there."

Puddles of the liquid were all over the station, and the blue mist was getting thick. Shinji's eyes began watering, his skin itching. He coughed.

"Where to" he coughed again "now?"

"It's cutting you off," Misato said. "I don't know whether it's deliberate, but you can't get through there, and Kyubei looks iffy. You could still try Mashitaka, you could make that if it doesn't get any more good hits in the way. It's about two kilometres. Leave the station and turn left. Hurry."

Kaworu chimed in. "Major Katsuragi? I'm blocked, too."

"Hang on, I can't focus on both of you at once. Aoba!"

The call split into two subconferences. "On it," said the tech. "You … ouch, it's almost like it's been gunning for you personally. I see a complete ring of blue around you, not containing any stations."

"Oh dear," said Kaworu.

"I'll try to divert some of it with the storm drains. Stay where you are and keep under cover."

…

Rei led Asuka down to the station. The tram was waiting for them. They climbed on board; the doors shut, controlled by some tech or AI, and it accelerated down its tracks.

"That was close," Asuka said. "When we get close enough to fight this thing, we're taking it down _hard_. You remember your position from the sims?"

"I am still unauthorised to deploy," Rei said.

Asuka gave her an incredulous look. "You remember what that thing can do, even with all of us together, and even before we knew about this acidy crap. We're already down two pilots, and you want to let me fight it single-handed?"

"I did not say I wanted that," Rei said.

Asuka slapped a hand to her forehead. "You drive me completely crazy sometimes, you know that, First? What _do_ you want? Are you going to fight, or are you going to sit on the Commander's lap?"

Rei said nothing. There was the rumble of another volley of acid bombs impacting across the city above.

Asuka tossed her hair. "Well, you've got about three minutes to decide, because I'm fighting this thing, with you or – _Verdammte Scheiße!_"

She pointed, where a line of blue was running down from a hole in the ceiling, directly onto the tram track behind them. It took only a moment to eat through the electrified rail; Asuka had a premonition of the tram hurtling out of control, and grabbed the railing, but without power, the tram's dead man's switch engaged and jammed on the brakes, bringing it to a lurching halt. Asuka regained her feet, glared at a bemused Rei, and brought her phone back to her mouth.

"You saw that, didn't you? What the hell are we supposed to do now?" Apparently another hit had taken out a telco tower, because her line was dead. She swore again and threw her phone through an open window, then immediately regretted it. "I really, really hate this Angel."

Rei walked to the front of the tram, unscrewed a seat, and threw it through the windscreen, spraying glass out and over the Geofront. She poked her head through the hole. The tram tracks were about a metre across and had an inverted V cross-section, with a twelve degree gradient going forward and a sixty degree slope to either side. They were about eight hundred metres up, and the track was over three and a half kilometres long. She poked a leg through the hole; Asuka seized her and yanked her back.

"Don't even think about it, you suicidal blue-haired idiot. There's no way you could possibly make it to the bottom without slipping."

"We have no choice."

"Are you stupid? We can wait for them to pick us up. Look, they built this line, so they have to have maintenance crews, right? And those have to have forklifts and things. Take off your neckerchief and wave it out a window. Come on."

Shigeru was still talking to Kaworu; their line was scratchy with static. "The storm drains can't take any more. I can't reroute any more acid, and it's weakening the armour to even try. I'm sorry."

"I see. So there's no way for me to get to the Geofront?"

"We could try to airlift you, but getting a craft in through that bombardment would be dangerous. Let me think –"

"Hi everyone!"

"Aah!"

"Schatz!" said Kaworu, a smile returning to his face at her voice. "You made it through, then."

"Mm-hmm. The library's just a block away from the nearest station. Well, it was. I _liked_ that library."

"Careful, Schatz. It's no pushover."

"Neither are we. Get to a shelter. We'll deal with the Angel."

"Stay safe."

Misato turned to Chitose. "Suit up and get into Unit-03. Hyuga will brief you on tactics before you launch."

"Yes'm."

"And for God's sake, leave your mobile on from now on, no exceptions."

"Yeah … I'm sorry about that, really, that was stupid. I won't turn it off again."

"Good. Now go." She turned to Makoto. "Is Unit-04 going to arrive in time?"

He shook his head. "It'd take three hours to fly here, even if we could persuade the Americans. We're fighting this one with just the four Evas."

"Ugh. I can't believe it got here so fast. Do we at least have permission to field Rei?"

At that moment, the discussion was drowned out by another alarm. The red ALERT kanji lining the walls turned yellow and changed to read AGGRAVATED ALERT.

"What _now?_" asked Misato.

"It's – it's a second blue pattern!" Maya said. "Angel inbound from the north-west! Another one!"

She flipped a switch and an image displayed on the wall, a monstrous asymmetrical shape over the sea, with hundreds of white and grey feathery wings of all shapes and sizes, concealing a body with thousands of mismatched eyes, glowing dull red. Its wings pulsed with AT energy as they flapped, tinting the air orange, and little flaming particles dropped from its body; there were clouds of steam behind it. As they watched, it passed the shoreline, and moments later, a fire blazed in its wake. A UN artillery battery from behind a hill opened up on it; it replied with a beam of white energy that lanced through the hill and turned the battery into a crater. The satellite feeds of the two Angels resized and shifted to display both at once; Magi captioned them Kou and Otsu.

"_No,_" breathed Ritsuko. "No, this – this wasn't supposed to happen. There can't be two at once, it's not … this is bad. This is really, really bad."

"I figured that out myself," said Misato. "Shinji, you're almost to the station, keep going!"

This was easier said than done. The city was by this point covered in acid; little puddles in the street were connecting into large, impassable pools, and the fumes were thick in the air. Shinji was coughing every few paces now; his eyes were scrunched up to slits and weeping uncontrollably, and he could barely see. His lips cracked and bled.

"Just a bit further. Go on! You can do it! We're depending on you!"

"Incoming!" said Maya.

Shinji collapsed behind an armour plate as another bomb flew overhead, smashed a power substation to bits, and sprayed acid in all directions. A large dollop landed ahead of him, blocking the street completely.

"…" said Misato, watching the satellite feed. "Shinji, can you double back?"

He brought his phone up, and just coughed into it. He dropped it, and couldn't see where it fell.

"He's not going to make it," Ritsuko said.

"The hell he isn't. Aoba, get a VTOL to pick him up."

"And do what, take him to Ashitaka?" said Ritsuko. "They won't be able to get him to a station, even if there are any still intact, and he –"

"That was an _order,_ Ritsuko. Remember those?" She turned back to the tech. "Get me a damn VTOL."

Shinji coughed on all fours, and now blood was coming up. His eyes were masses of phlegmy tears, and his ears were ringing.

_This is less bad than I'd thought._

_I guess I'll see you son, Mother._

"You look like hell, kid," said a male voice in accented English. Shinji couldn't understand him any more, or do anything when a strong arm wrapped around his midsection and lifted up. "No worries, we'll see you right. I've got him. Take us up, Skip."

The winch around the airman's chest tautened and began lifting them toward the VTOL hovering overhead. The VTOL rose too, then swerved violently; a moment later, another supersonic ball of acid arced through the air it had been in, and it shuddered with the sonic boom. Shinji and the airman swung through the air like a pendulum.

"Christ, Clive, could you make it any rougher?" the airman asked his earpiece. "I'm only holding a quarter of the world's effective military here."

"_You can catch the next one in your teeth if you want, mate._"

"Be a good way to wash out that crap they give us for lunch."

Misato's voice interrupted the chatter. "Now, hover directly over coordinate G-11. It looks like it's about a hundred metres from where you are now, due west."

"I see it," said the captain, and he directed the pilot. "But we're sitting targets out here." The winch finally got Shinji and the airman into the craft. "And the kid doesn't look like he'll hold up long without a hospital."

"Exactly." She watched the VTOL's transponder on the virtual map until it reached its destination. "Good. Shut all your doors. When I give the signal, I want you to dump all your lime at once, then reverse the engine, maximum power."

"Uh, Major? The engine is the thing that's keeping us _up_. Reversing will send us _down_. Straight into the ground."

"I know. Now!"

The pilot shook his head in disbelief, but obeyed. The VTOL opened its bay doors and dived; at the same moment, the armour plating rolled aside with a screech of grinding metal, letting a waterfall of acid rain down into the Geofront. The lime splashed into it, turning it into a spray of salty steam; the VTOL shot through it, and the armour plates rolled back over a moment later.

"Report!"

"Armour damaged," read out the pilot. "Landing gear gone, weapons systems unusable, fuel leaking. Engine, rotors damaged but operational. Avionics fine. Stabilising altitude." The captain translated for the benefit of Misato, whose English wasn't good enough for an Australian accent talking technical.

"That's all fine. Make an emergency landing by the pyramid, north side. We'll have a triage team ready for the pilot."

As the VTOL descended, the airman glanced out the window at the monorail track. "Uh, Skip? It looks like there're two girls in that tram."

The captain followed his subordinate's gaze, and saw the redhead waving furiously at him. "Red hair, blue hair. Those are the first two Children." He glanced down at Shinji, and judged that he wouldn't die in the next five minutes. "Clive, take us over. We'd better pick them up too."

The VTOL detoured over toward the tram; as it closed, the tram began vibrating, and the girls waved him back.

"No good, Skip," said the pilot. "The downdraft's too much with all the damage."

Misato's voice came back online. "What's the hold-up?" she asked.

The captain opened a window and threw their parachutes out at the tram, one by one; two of the three made it close enough for the redhead to catch. She gave a thumbs-up, and he motioned the pilot to continue down. "Just saw some friends who'll drop by in a minute."

"Get down here, _now!_"

Half a kilometre above, the heavy steel shutters of a shelter slid open, then silently shut again, as Kaworu slipped into the high school's shelter. The space within was dimly lit and claustrophobic, crowded with students and passers-by who had happened to be close when the Angel attacked. He didn't know this, but the mood was much tenser than usual; this was the first time they'd been taken completely by surprise, and the first time since the third Angel that civilians had died.

Tsuruko spotted him. "Kaworu-chan?" she asked, walking over. "What are you –"

He shoved past her, sending her sprawling; she skinned a knee against the concrete floor. She looked up and narrowed her eyes as he ran past.

He avoided everyone else and headed for the shelter's lowest sub-basement. He shut his eyes and focused on his breathing. This Angel was obviously much better at sensing AT Fields than its predecessors; he'd guessed that when he saw it kill the pilot of Unit-04. He himself could only sense Fields with line-of-sight and at close range, which mostly manifested as a feeling of impending doom around active Evas that he wasn't piloting. He couldn't completely negate his own Field, but he could dampen it with concentration; hopefully that, together with being deep underground, would be enough to keep the Angel out of the shelter for long enough for the other pilots to destroy it.

"Nagisa?" He opened his eyes. It was Hikari. "Sakaki told me she saw you come here. Why are you here? Why aren't –"

"Stay back," he said softly. His AT Field rose in the presence of others; he could best control it when he could pretend to exist in his own little world, and a wide bubble of personal space was needed for that.

Hurt appeared in Hikari's eyes. "I trust you."

"You shouldn't. But if you do, then trust me when I say it would be best for everyone here if you kept your distance from me right now. It isn't anything to do with who you are, Horaki-san; if anyone approaches me now, the Angel will sense me and destroy this shelter."

"I told you to call me Hikari," she chided, but obeyed him and stayed a good six metres away. "So why are you here? You have to pilot to stop that thing."

"The acid is in the way. I can't reach headquarters."

"Can't you – I don't know –" Hikari glanced around to make sure no-one was in earshot "just do your – thing, and push it away?"

"Not without revealing my nature to Nerv. I cannot risk that, not yet. It would be contrary to my purpose."

"So you're going to let that thing destroy the city?"

He shut his eyes again. "There are four other pilots, and only four Evas. I am not needed today."

Hikari frowned, but accepted that. It wasn't worth risking his life for, not when he'd be needed in later battles. "Can I ask you about … you? I mean, that's … pretty important. Why are you like that?"

"Because I was made this way," Kaworu said. It might help with suppressing his AT Field to think about the past rather than the present. "Before I was born, my DNA was spliced with genes taken from Adam, the progenitor of the Angels. Because of that, half of his soul now inhabits my body, and I am the first proper Angel, although my formal designation will be the twentieth. Or possibly the nineteenth, depending on how Nerv classifies me, and technically I'm only half an Angel, for now. It's complicated."

She sifted through this and prioritised her next question. "Was it Nerv who did this to you? It sounds like they were trying to make you into an Angel, but isn't Nerv fighting them; aren't Angels supposed to be enemies of humanity? I mean, no offence," she added quickly, not wanting to annoy the pluripotent being who could probably crush her with a thought.

He nodded, leaving his eyes shut. "Yes. My backers have many names for themselves; you probably wouldn't recognise any of them. They wanted an Angel they could control. After the other Angels are destroyed, my purpose is to end the war on their terms."

"Okay," she said, well aware that he was omitting a lot of details. "I suppose they can't be bad; I mean, you're not a bad person, especially not after you saved the school."

"The Angels all have designations," Kaworu said. "Mine is that of free will. I was not ordered to protect the school. In fact I will probably be scolded for risking my cover."

Hikari frowned. "Then it sounds like your 'backers' are enemies of Nerv, and Nerv is trying to save the world. Why would you do what they want?"

"It's … complicated."

…

Asuka's plug spun into Unit-02's back, and locked in place. There was the familiar burst of neural static, and Eva was active.

"First things first," she said, "how is it shelling us? I thought it didn't have any ranged attacks, never mind one like that."

A satellite video appeared in her HUD. The first Angel, Kou, was standing on its legs to raise its central disc off the ground; it loped along at a decent pace considering how ungainly it looked, entering the outskirts of Tokyo-3. As it walked, the blue rim of its disc spun around, faster and faster; it thickened, bulged out with centripetal force, then suddenly broke apart into blobs that shot forward out of the camera frame, almost too fast to track. The rim then slowed and reformed.

"The target has displayed this attack pattern since it emerged from Sagami Bay," Maya narrated. "Senpai hypothesises that while it was under the water, it developed the ability to use the rotation to lower water pressures, allowing it to supercavitate and swim faster than we predicted, and that it's co-opted this for use in bombardment. We don't know how accurate it is; probably less so than the fifth's energy beam, for example, but it makes up for that with volume of fire, indirect fire, and persistence of fire. The bright side is that it doesn't seem able to roll and use the attack at the same time, so its mobility should hopefully be limited if it tries to shoot during combat."

"How are we going to beat this thing?" Asuka asked. "I'm guessing Wondergirl's tower idea is off the table now."

"The catapult launch sites are too damaged; we'd only be able to launch one at a time, with no external power," said Misato. "We're going to lure it into the city, then trapdoor an armour plate out from under it. You three will have to hit it as soon as it lands. It will land hard, so you should have an opening; you know what will happen if you give it time to move. After you kill it, then we'll have to deal with the second Angel."

"Us three?" Asuka repeated. "So Smarmy got lost after all? Great."

Chitose's face appeared in her HUD. She had clearly had a haircut recently from someone who wasn't a hairdresser. "It's a pity I wasn't there for the sims," she said, "but Lieutenant Hyuga filled me in. Make sure it doesn't stab or ram me, mostly. This is exciting; I can see why you like piloting."

"What? But, if you're here … don't tell me Wondergirl doesn't have permission to launch?"

Rei's face appeared beside Chitose's. "I have permission to fight within the Geofront," she confirmed.

"But then … where's Shinji?"

"He's going to be fine, Asuka, I –"

"Where is he."

"Asuka, there's a battle going on."

"So you'd better hurry up and _tell me where he is,_ because I'm not, I'm not going to fight if I don't know you're taking proper care of us pilots!"

Misato winced. Asuka thought she was a hotshot pilot, but she didn't have a fraction of the discipline needed to be a real soldier. Still, too much depended on her to just ignore her. She opened a new connection. "Ritz, how's Shinji doing?"

A link opened, showing a tank of amber fluid with a human form inside and a woman in a lab coat outside. "I'm flushing the acid out with an LCL bath. It's an experimental therapy, it's in his lungs, and _I need to concentrate._" Ritsuko clicked the line shut.

Misato saw Asuka's fist clenching. "There's nothing you can do for him now except keep that thing out of HQ. Ritz'll save him."

Asuka glared. "It's his own fault for being so slow," she said. "I only care about killing the Angel."

"Glad to hear it," said Misato. "All three of you, head out; I'll mark the target's drop point on your HUDs. It's going to be tight; we'll need to kill it before the second one arrives, so you can take them out one at a time."

The three Evas walked out of HQ and assembled in the Geofront. Chitose began singing under her breath, badly off-key: "Girls … are doing fine … girls against the world …"

"Do we have any data on the second Angel?" Rei asked softly, ignoring this.

Misato looked at her screen. It had destroyed everything in its path. It was flying too high for a prog knife, too fast for the positron cannon, and its AT Field was undoubtedly too tough for a pallet rifle. On top of that, it could zap and burn the Evas at will, and they had no credible defences. "We're formulating a strategy. Let me worry about that for now."

She watched Kou pick its way over the cityscape. She noted it stepping in the acid without effect: its own skin was apparently immune to it. She also noted that it was heading for the exact same point that the fifth and thirteenth had begun drilling, directly over Nerv HQ. The Angels knew more than they were letting on.

"The target will be in position in five seconds," reported Maya. "Three … two … one …"

"Retract the armour!" Misato ordered.

There was a shriek of tortured metal, and the Angel staggered, but kept its footing.

"Actuators damaged!" reported Shigeru. "The acid's eaten the motors and some of the power conduits! We can't move the plate!"

The Angel strolled around the city, waiting for its acid to break through to the Geofront, but Misato ignored it, and stared at the video of the second Angel cresting over the horizon, coming to join its older, weaker brother.

…

"They're the only ones who understand what I am," Kaworu told Hikari. "My powers are a curse. They are the only ones with any chance of reversing it."

"How is it a curse?" she asked. "You saved the school. I bet you can do lots of other cool things. If you just told Nerv about that, it'd prove you weren't an enemy of humankind, and then they'd have no problem with you, right?"

He shook his head. "My Angelic nature comes with its own drawbacks. You Lilin are all different, and yet so alike. There are only six other beings like myself still alive in the universe, and two of them are going to die today. Can you imagine what it would be like to go your entire life to know that you can never see or touch another truly like yourself, or if you did, it would be moments before one destroyed the other?"

"Kaworu …"

"Stay back," he repeated, not opening his eyes.

"I don't understand."

"I'm sorry. You're a good person, Horaki Hikari. You should be happy. That won't happen if you're around me."

"You deserve to be happy too," she said, folding her arms. "Even aside from you saving the school and I don't know how many lives, and the fact that you're an Eva pilot and in charge of saving the world, you're a good person. I can't just ignore that."

He had to smile. "Thank you. At any rate, my backers are not opposed to Nerv; they are its financiers. There are … disagreements over the form of the final Scenario, but both wish for humankind to defeat the Angels."

"That's the important thing, then, isn't it?" said Hikari.

"Perhaps. The situation is more complicated than – oh!" His eyes flashed, briefly.

"What is it?"

"It's about to begin."

…

Central Dogma was in chaos. Junior techs were running everywhere; alerts about subsystem failures wailed or lined the walls in red and yellow; garbled radio messages came from speakers, their audio quality deteriorating as the infrastructure overloaded; and above it all, videos of the Angels showed them drawing together. Commander Ikari sat above it all, Fuyutsuki behind and at his side as ever.

Misato's mind drew one blank after another. Two Angels at once, each more powerful than any they had faced before, and they had required three Evas before. They could _maybe_ match the first one by itself, although probably not without casualties, but they had absolutely no hope about the second, and they could hardly expect the Angels to fight them one at a time, maybe with a long break for repairs in the middle.

"This looks like it might be it," Makoto said quietly. "We can't beat them."

"We can't give up now," Misato replied. "Not after we've come so far."

"I know. And I'll be here until the end. It's just …"

"I know, Makoto," she said.

The second Angel folded some of its myriad wings and angled its descent toward the first. Kou turned to face it, and its rim began spinning, faster and faster, bulging outward.

"Are they … communicating?" Misato wondered aloud, a moment before the Angels opened fire on each other.

Kou let loose a barrage of the blue slime at Otsu; Otsu answered with a direct beam attack. The acid spattered against Otsu's AT Field, and flowed around and through, burning it; it beat its wings chaotically, twisted in midair, spraying most of the acid off, and vectored over Kou, throwing what looked like burning coals across the city. Kou dropped onto its wheel and rolled out of the way.

"What the hell is going on?" said Asuka.

"They're trying to kill each other," Chitose explained.

"_I can fr__ic__king see that__! That was a rhetorical __question!"_

"Oh? Do you ask those often?"

Asuka quivered in rage, and she raised a fist, Eva and all, but then she abruptly quieted. _"_Forget it. _Why_ are they trying to kill each other?"

"Because of their conflicting AT Fields. It stands for Absolute Terror, right? So when two of them get close, they terrify each other, and they lash out. It would happen for us, too, but Eva blocks most of the emotional effect for us."

"I – you – are you saying you know what the Angels want?"

"Well, AT rage is more of an emotional thing. But, yes, they want to merge with either Seed of Life and create a new world order of Angelic domination, don't they?" Chitose said.

"Ibuki," the Commander said, his hand over his microphone. "On my mark, make ready to raise her LCL concentration to the limit."

"Sir? That would knock her unconscious. The Angels –"

"I said, make ready," he repeated. Maya glanced around, but Ritsuko wasn't there, and Misato wasn't the same, so she typed the command into a console but didn't send it.

"Is that wise, during a battle?" Fuyutsuki asked quietly.

"If she truly is with Seele, they're counting on us thinking otherwise," Ikari replied. "We cannot let them blackmail us, at any cost. And even if not, she's still a potential liability. There will be other Angels."

"I mean, as much as anything like them can be said to 'want' anything," Chitose continued. "You wouldn't say that hydrogen 'wants' to burn in air, but it does. Isn't this common knowledge?"

"No!" Asuka shouted, her eye twitching. "It is not! How do you know it? Why would anyone tell you? You're not even a real pilot!"

"Well, it wasn't Nerv who told me, it was Seele, and I wasn't any sort of pilot at all at the time."

"_Stop giving answers that just raise further questions! Who's Seele? __Soul?__ What's a Seed of Life?!_"

Otsu fired another two energy beams; the first crunched against Kou's AT Field, and the second punched through and knocked off a leg. Kou stood and began spinning for another attack; Otsu blasted off another leg before Kou got a glob of acid off, which spattered through Otsu's AT Field and began searing its wings and body.

"They're this other group, they want to … it's complicated. Anyway, there are two Seeds; Adam created the Angels, Lilith created all other life on Earth, including humans, through abiogenesis and directed evolution. They used to be giants like Evas, although they're a little, uh, diminished right now. If an Angel gets to Adam, it'll revive Him, and He'll germinate another generation of Angels in that one's image; if Lilith, it will take Her fruit and ascend to omnipotence, and then go and find Adam anyway. I'm not absolutely certain about this, but I think they're both in the basement. That's why the Angels all come here."

"Do it," Ikari ordered Maya.

"Wait, I want to hear –" Misato began.

"I said _do it._"

"Normally they attack one at a time to stop this exact thing from happening. I wonder why these two arrived at the same time? Maybe the second one thought the first had a good chance of winning, because it beat Unit-04, although that's smarter than I'd glaar …"

Her back arched, and she was still. Maya gave Misato an apologetic look; Misato scowled.

"You're _joking,_" Asuka said, looking at Chitose's unconscious body superimposed over Eva-03; its autopilot kept it standing but slumped.

"She was broadcasting highly classified material on an insecure line," Ikari said.

"That was _you?_ She was _waiting to help me kill that thing!_" Asuka shrieked back, pointing upwards, her expression shifting from annoyed to enraged.

"Remember your place."

"My _place_ is right here in Eva, killing Angels, and I can't do that if you take away half of my backup! Why didn't you just lock her transmitter?!"

"Asuka!" Misato said, but Asuka was not the sort of person to be calmed so easily when worked up.

"Don't you 'Asuka' me, Misato. You saw what the first one did when it was four on one! We were already down two pilots! You're not the one risking her neck out here!"

"Yes, I am! If you lose, humankind will be wiped out. I'm _part_ of humankind."

"So start acting like it and do something!"

Otsu was losing altitude, but still firing its beams wildly and flinging burning bits of its body all across the city. Kou had lost three legs and about a quarter of its eyes, and was rolling around with much less grace and agility than before, bouncing off mounds of rubble and skidding in small lakes of its own acid. It tried to stand, failed, and instead strained and regenerated a limb; Otsu swooped and carpeted it with fire.

"You are behaving like a child," Ikari said.

"Oh, that's just _rich_, coming from Mister 'Let's disable a third of the force instead of just telling her to shut up like everyone else does'!"

Misato stared, unable to quite believe it. She had never seen Asuka and Ikari speak together before; she'd expected Asuka to be at least nominally respectful. Asuka, she realised, was utterly terrified, and lashing out.

"If you do not act like a pilot should, you will be replaced."

"Yeah? By who, the autistic girl you just knocked out, or that grey-haired idiot who couldn't even walk out of a school without crippling himself?" She gave a tiny, hysterical laugh. "With Shinji in the ICU and Wondergirl still grounded, I'm the only one left who can do anything. Me. _Me_. Don't you dare call me a doll now!"

_Doll?_ wondered Misato.

"Rei," said Ikari.

"Yes?"

"I authorise you to engage and destroy the Angels on the surface."

"Yes." She began moving toward the nearest trans-Geofront catapult.

Asuka intercepted and swept her legs from under her; Rei crashed to the ground. "Are you out of your mind? Rei's synch rate is barely half of mine, and her AT Field is tissue-thin! She doesn't stand a chance against them!"

"She will follow orders. If you can't do that, you're worthless."

Asuka boiled. Misato put her hand over her mike. "Sir, are you sure –"

"Yes," he said, with irritation.

Asuka hissed, hefted her weapon – a twisted piece of metal Dr Akagi had designated the mock-up of a Progressive Scythe, which had seemed like a viable way of reaching the Angel's core – and ran for the only intact catapult.

"When this is over, I want _answers,_" she snapped, just before shooting upward.

Kou was lying on one side, feebly jabbing at Otsu with its two remaining limbs; Otsu, which was leaking LCL out of acid wounds across its body, was laboriously hovering just out of reach. It flapped a little away, reversed direction, and rammed Kou, knocking both to the ground in a tangle of limbs and wings, sending up splashes of acid and fire. A bipartite jaw extended from the winged Angel's body, seized Kou's core, and wrenched it loose; the fallen Angel went still.

Unit-02 appeared two hundred metres away, the crude scythe in hand.

"Hi," she said, and charged.

The Angel's eyes swivelled to her, and its jaw opened a little wider to swallow the fallen Angel's core. Asuka dashed forward, ignoring the acid and flames licking at her feet, went right through the Angel's weakened AT Field, and sliced the mouth off; the extra core fell to the ground.

"No," she said, and brought her scythe around in an overhead hammer blow on the core; it shattered.

The Angel thrashed its wings, and lifted a glowing eye at her; she stabbed through it before it could use its energy attack, burying her weapon up to the hilt. She traded it out for her prog knives, and proceeded to carve the Angel apart. She took four and a half minutes to find the core and smash it to bits.


	8. Revi'i ben Lailah

A helicopter cruised over the city, it blades whirring as its passenger examined the damage. It was, in a word, a mess. The CBD was still retracted, the ground covered in soot and acid scarring. The suburbs had been hit, some badly, some untouched, some lightly damaged, some wiped out altogether. VTOLs circled overhead, dumping loads of lime and cycling back for more; clean-up crews on the ground had hoses and pumps, draining the neutralised solution out of the city. They were methodically reclaiming land, liberating the shelters and other priority areas, but they couldn't do much for the bright blue stains, which scrubbing could make fade but not vanish.

"Where to now?" the pilot asked.

"Back to the terminal. I've seen enough. And I need to get back to work."

This was not to be, though, because Asuka was waiting at the station outside Nerv HQ, fit to be tied. "You," she spat. "Me. Answers. Now."

"Misato said your Japanese was coming along better than that," Ritsuko said.

"_Don't_ push me right now. The Commander's hiding in his office like a little girl, the Weird Girl is still out, and Misato's pining over the Idiot, but you, _you_ will give me answers."

Ritsuko folded her arms, showing the bulge against her waist of her gun. "Is that a fact?"

"So, what, you're going to shoot the only competent pilot left on the roster? Yeah, right. What have you been hiding from us? From _me?_"

Ritsuko considered this. Asuka didn't have much scope to be useful beyond her role as a pilot, and telling her too much would annoy the Commander and possibly the Committee or Fuyutsuki. "Operational details that wouldn't have been important for your duties."

"You don't think that maybe I had a right to know that the Angels aren't even trying to destroy this city? To know what I'm actually fighting for?"

Ritsuko rolled her eyes and began walking. Asuka kept pace.

"I mean, I get that you'd want to keep it secret from civilians that the Angels only attack this city because you're holding their father hostage here. I can see that it might be bad for PR, if it got out that it's entirely your fault. What gets me is that I had to hear it from the Weird Girl. Why does she get to know, and I don't? What else does she know that I don't?"

"If that's all you're worried about, take it up with Seele," Ritsuko said, not bothering to turn and make eye contact. "They're the ones who told her, not me."

"Yeah? And how exactly do I do that? I don't get the feeling they have a listed number."

"True. Even I don't know any of their real names or faces."

"Meaning that you're the one who's been keeping me in the dark."

"Technically, that was the Commander's orders."

"Don't give me that crap. You're senior enough that you could have told me if you cared."

"Mm. I suppose you have to conclude that I don't care what you think."

Asuka turned on a yen to block Ritsuko's path, sending the older woman stumbling back a step. Furious, Ritsuko slapped Asuka, or rather tried to, because Asuka, who had spent two thirds of her life training to battle the greatest monsters humankind had ever faced, blocked, stepping into it and driving an elbow into her throat out of pure muscle memory. Ritsuko was too surprised to dodge, and they both fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs. A security guard grabbed Asuka and hauled her off; she flailed, hitting him solidly on the nose, but another two guards arrived and seized her arms. She kicked, bit, and swore at them in German, all without effect.

Ritsuko coughed, got to her feet, and straightened her clothes. "Escort her back to the surface. She's making a nuisance of herself down here."

"Tell me!" Asuka shouted, as the three men dragged her away. "_Stop treating me like a child and tell me!_"

Ritsuko strolled off into the great pyramid, and, as soon as she could breathe properly again, didn't give Asuka another thought.

…

Makoto stood at the pile of chemically active rubble that used to be his apartment.

"Not _again,_" he said, defeated.

…

Chitose came to in a hospital bed. This wasn't particularly interesting; Seele had put her under enough times when she was younger for the novelty to wear off. Her eyes snapped open, and she looked around. Maya was by her bed, working on her PDA.

"Hello, Maya," Chitose said, making the tech jump. "Did you want to talk to me?"

"Oh – yes." Maya blushed. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I have a minor headache. Do you suppose it might be a concussion?"

"It isn't; the doctor says you should be fine now."

"I'm glad. What happened? I don't remember fighting; only until the Angels started fighting each other. Are they dead now? This place is a lot calmer than I'd think it'd be if the world were about to end."

"That's right. One killed the other, and Asuka finished it off. Um. The Commander had your LCL concentration upped to knock you out, because you were saying things you shouldn't have."

"An entire Eva could have been the difference between winning and losing that battle," Chitose said, her voice slowing and deepening. "That could have got us all killed."

"Um," Maya said, a feeling like static electricity between her shoulders. "I know, but. You were breaking your NDA. And I can't really go against him because, well, he's the Commander."

Chitose maintained a blank stare for long moments. Maya fidgeted. Then Chitose nodded, and her voice returned to normal. "That makes sense, for you, I suppose. What specifically has he forbidden me from saying?"

"Er. I don't know, exactly, because I don't know everything about the Angels and the Seeds and Seele … he said not to say anything about any of that to anyone, and that you're supposed to be under non … dis … closure …"

Chitose never glared or even frowned, exactly, but her expression still managed to convey rapidly increasing displeasure, and her voice slowed and cleared again, although not as deep as before. "I see. May I have my phone, please? I need to send a text."

"You can't. The telco network is down."

"I have a really good carrier," Chitose said.

Maya shrugged and fumbled for Chitose's bag, on the floor near her bed. "For what it's worth, I didn't agree with the decision. But there are things going on that I don't know about, you know?"

"I do. Thank you for conveying his message to me, Maya."

Maya apologised again and hurried out of the ward, as Chitose typed her message.

…

After the crews cleared the acid out from around the shelter, Hikari directed the students out and to their homes, if they were still standing, or to the temporary housing being set up in the city outskirts. Kaworu stood beside her, and when her duties were discharged, walked her home.

"I've been wondering. What is an Angel?" she asked. "They all look so different. I thought they were all giant monsters that wanted to destroy the city, but I guess not; none of that applies to you."

"An Angel is any child of Adam."

"Okay … but in more, um, immediate terms? It can't be that all of them – except you – want to destroy humankind just because they – you – come from Adam. The, um, AT Field?" Asuka had mentioned the term a few times, then gone vague about it; like the other students, Hikari had put two and two together.

"That's one of two main things," Kaworu nodded. "Absolute Terror. Have you heard of the Hedgehog's Dilemma? The Field gives the power to keep others away. We are also able to sense other AT Fields; these cause that Absolute Terror in us." He gestured toward the city centre, where they could see the mangled corpses of the two Angels, being chopped up and carried away by crews. "While that's happening, we have no choice but to attack or flee. However powerful the Field may be, it's ultimately a weakness, because it means that Angels must always be alone. The Lilin's strength is in cooperation. A dozen times now, that cooperation has beaten Angels' raw power."

She digested this. "What was the second thing that makes an Angel an Angel?"

"The S2 organ. It powers the AT Field, as well as limitless energy for regeneration and combat. Things like flight and energy weapons. Mine is in place of one of my kidneys; it's about the same shape and size. It's not large enough for me to match an Angel's power at close range. Size matters."

"That still doesn't explain why the Angels want to destroy humankind," Hikari pointed out.

"Strictly speaking, they don't. They are drawn to –" His phone chimed. He pulled it out. "I'm sorry, but this is urgent."

Hikari frowned. Kaworu was obviously not raised Japanese; only a European would answer a phone while holding a conversation. "How do you know before you read it? Is that another Angelic thing? Psychic powers telling you the future?"

The chime was Chitose's personalised tone, and if she had wanted to relive her role in the battle or otherwise enjoy herself, she would have called him, not texted. "No. It's just that some people live their lives bouncing from crisis to crisis."

"Asuka?" Hikari guessed, then clapped her hands to her mouth and blushed, but he didn't notice, focusing instead on the text. _[On a scale from __zero__ to __ten__, where __ten__ is __3I__, how bad would it be if the Commander had a __fatal__ accident?]_

Having spent the battle in the shelter, he wasn't sure what this was about. Probably Ikari made a bad call, one affecting her or maybe Rei or Asuka, and she was overreacting. Seele would be delighted if two of their problems cancelled each other out, but he really wasn't interested in seeing how that particular disaster would play out.

"Chitose, actually." _[__I'd say a__ four, __as in about 40% probability of 3I.__He's not unique like a pilot is, but__ I don't know who else could deal with Seele, Nerv, the UN, __the Japanese government,__ the Angels, the other pilots, and us.]_

"That girl who kept asking questions out of turn in class?" Hikari asked disapprovingly.

"That sounds like her. You remember her?"

"She was very rude."

His phone chimed again. _[They could find someone else. Or __his work__ could be shared between several people. __He can't possibly be the __only__ person on Earth for his role.__]_

"She is her own person. She doesn't like having rules imposed upon her. She did control herself as well as she could." _[Do me a favour, Schatz?]_

"She didn't do a very good job, then," Hikari said.

_Visit the Himalayas and say that again._ "She's had a difficult life. She only recently escaped from … an unpleasant place. Anything too similar to that can set her off."

_[For you, love.]_

He put the phone away. Just because he missed the battle didn't mean he didn't have to help save the world, in his own little way.

…

Ritsuko waited outside the great pyramid of Nerv HQ. Misato stood by her side, watching as the monorail circled down toward them.

"Remind me who we're waiting for, again?" Misato asked. "I'm on the clock. So are you."

"Well, what else is new. Calm down. Gyandev is an honoured guest here. The least you can do is greet him. After all, it's your charge who depends on him."

"So, what, is Gyan– is this guy some kind of specialist at dealing with acid burns?" The Indian phonics were alien and hard for her to pronounce.

"_Doctor_ Venkatesh is the world authority on stem cell medicine. Over ninety percent of Shinji's alveoli are destroyed or damaged beyond use. If anyone can get him out of that tank alive, it's him. On top of that, he's an old friend of mine. We met at university. Try to be nice to him."

"I'm nice to everyone," said Misato.

"Other than Kaji," Ritsuko noted.

"Bite me."

"I imagine you've said that to him on occasion, too," Ritsuko said, just as the monorail doors slid open, and Misato could only shoot her a grin that showed rather more teeth than usual.

Dr Venkatesh was very tall. He wore a nice suit and carried a briefcase. "Ritsie-poo," he said, with a smile that raised the hairs on the back of Misato's neck, and stepped forward, took Ritsuko's hand, and kissed it. "You're looking well. And you are?" he added to Misato, his eyes visibly flicking down to her breasts.

"Major Katsuragi," she said, forcing her smile to be a little more natural.

"Oh, the soldier. Will you show me to the patient?" he asked Ritsuko; Misato's smile slipped a notch. "Let's walk and talk."

He took Ritsuko's arm; she made a thumbs-up to Misato behind her back, and the two of them walked off. Misato waited until they were a comfortable distance away before heading back to her office.

"I never would have thought you'd go for a place like this," Gyandev said. "You're not exactly an adventurer."

"I have a budget measured in the hundreds of billions of yen and I don't need to submit grant applications," Ritsuko said, removing her arm.

"So? Neither do I."

"Well, I suppose you're lucky that your field lets you work from Washington. Or, it did."

"I'm sure I could find you a position in my lab," he offered.

Ritsuko gave a polite laugh. "Project E would fall to bits without me. I'd be court-martialled for even considering it."

"That's negotiable. With the right backers –"

"Aren't you curious about Shinji?"

Gyandev took the hint at last. "I read the file you sent me. He sounds like a mess."

"That would be because he is a mess. We need him usable as soon as possible, ideally before the next attack. You have a month. Ish. Probably. Can you do it?"

"Perhaps. But not if there are any … unexpected surprises." Ritsuko winced: surprising things happened every day at Nerv. "Why such urgency? I understood you had a spare pilot, and another Eva that isn't even being used."

"Unit-00 isn't a combat model," she dissembled, "and there would be personality clashes if we tried to field the other three pilots at once. Shinji's a stabilising influence, so to speak. Besides, we don't know if any of them can synchronise with Unit-01, and it's liable to go berserk if we try."

"If you say so. My equipment will arrive this afternoon. I trust that there are no objections that I'm to have the run of the facility?"

"The Commander signed the order himself," she not-answered. "It's through here."

The standard treatment for severe lung damage involves immersion in breathable liquid. LCL turned out to be a worse medium than fluorocarbons, which have greater oxygen solubility and anti-inflammatory properties, so Shinji lay in a perflubron bath, belted down at the chest to stop him from bobbing to the surface. It looked like water, but was significantly denser.

He still looked terrible. His skin was raw, his sclerae pure red, his lips cracked. Beside him, in air, sat Rei, her hands folded in her lap.

"This is Doctor Venkatesh," said Ritsuko. "He's the best there is at regenerative therapies. He's going to try to heal you." Shinji, whose vocal folds were also burnt out, gave a thumbs up and weak, painful smile.

"Pleased to meet you," said Gyandev. "It's a little cramped in here, don't you think?"

This was true; with the bulky bath, the ward could only fit one patient plus a surgeon. Ritsuko and Rei edged past him. Once they were outside, Ritsuko said, "I didn't expect you to be sitting at his bedside."

Rei gave no indication of having heard. Ritsuko didn't like the girl by any stretch, but did find her perversely fascinating: never before had such a promising project gone so completely wrong in so little time with so little warning or particularly scientific explanation.

"Did the Commander order you to?" Ritsuko pressed, knowing the answer but wanting to hear how Rei justified herself.

Rei hesitated for several beats. "A pilot's ability to synchronise is dependent upon his psychological condition," she said at length. "My order is to facilitate the success of the Scenario. I therefore cannot allow his mental condition to deteriorate any further."

"That level of initiative is commendable. I'm sure the Commander would praise you highly if I told him."

Rei remained silent. It was entirely conceivable that she simply lacked the imagination to understand blackmail. That being said, there wasn't actually any point in blackmailing her; she'd do whatever Ritsuko told her to anyway. It felt like such a waste, though.

"I don't see the other pilots anywhere," Ritsuko pressed. "What do you think of that?"

Rei still said nothing, because she had in fact seen them around. Pilot Mogami had shown up, saying she wanted to know how perflubron smelled, before giggling about the octet rule and something about the Internet and running off. Pilot Soryu had skulked outside for a while, saying she was looking for a vending machine, until Pilot Nagisa showed up, when she began a one-sided screaming match which got them both thrown out.

"Are you going to go back tomorrow?"

"The same reason which required me to come today will remain valid tomorrow," Rei said.

"I see. Report to Major Katsuragi. If the Commander's allowing you to pilot, she'll want to drill you with the others."

"Yes," said Rei, and she glided off.

…

Nerv was an expensive organisation to run. A large part of why an entire city had been built right on top of where the Angels would attack was that it simply needed all of that infrastructure to operate, when one factored in all the technical, scientific, military, and administrative staff, and everyone who was needed to support all of them. This meant that it had the lowest unemployment rate and highest wages in the world. Because of this, because of generous all-purpose Angel insurance, because the most timid people had left immediately after the third Angel, and because Nerv had had the foresight to put heavy penalty clauses in the contracts of all employees for quitting with under three months' notice, very few people left, in spite of the devastation of half the city being consumed by fire and acid.

The repair crews were therefore hard at work rebuilding, mere hours after the two Angels were killed. After the fires were extinguished and the acid neutralised and pumped out, the major priorities were clearing away debris, setting up shelter, and re-laying the communication and transport networks. The major arterial tram lines were quickly up and running around the clock, pounding with the sound of heavy construction.

A gangly half-European girl, with bright green eyes, uneven but waist-length dyed-brown hair, and awful fashion sense, hopped off a tram, and looked around in fascination at the machinery all around. She quickly locked eyes with a shorter boy with brown hair and glasses.

"Hello! You must be Kensuke!" said Chitose. "Have you been waiting long? Am I late?" She looked into her bag and checked her phone; it was six minutes after they'd arranged.

"No, I only just got here a minute ago," lied Kensuke, who'd been there a quarter hour early. "I, uh, pleased to meet you. Was there, um, somewhere you wanted to go near here?"

"Yes! On the –" The tram rolled off. "– tram. Bother. Don't you think it's fascinating, seeing the city being rebuilt from scratch, like a human from a foetus?"

"Uh," he said, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Eight sentences, three of them only one word, and she'd already said something weird and disturbing. That was a new record, even by pilots' standards.

"Or maybe more like the phoenix from her pyre," Chitose said thoughtfully. "Don't you think it's interesting? On a high level, because of seeing how everything is coordinated, how all these pieces come together, down to the low level, the individual machines?" She watched a heavy earth mover trundle along parallel to the tram line. The driver whistled at her, more because she was looking his way than because she was attractive or of the age of consent. Her eyes flicked to him, and back to his machine.

"Uh," Kensuke said again, and seized the nearest thing to a lifeline he could find. "You like machinery?"

"Mm-hmm. I wouldn't mind being an engineer when I grow up. That, or a scientist. There's an observatory a few klicks out of the city limits, you know, for astronomy, where there's not so much light pollution. The Milky Way is so pretty."

He largely discarded the latter half of this. "So do I. Well, more military-specific. Or military anything."

"They do have the coolest hardware," she said, making eye contact again. "But it's pretty much all under nondisclosure. And they _never_ let me look at anything, let alone see blueprints."

"Not all of it. You can find specs for some stuff online, if you know where to look, or if you know the right people."

"_Really,_" she said. She waved down the next tram, and took Kensuke's hand to pull him on.

…

Misato found Kaji in the cafeteria, enjoying a late lunch while he scrolled through his laptop. She uncharitably spent a moment wondering whether it was likelier to be porn or top-secret Nerv files, before swallowing her pride and taking the seat next to him.

He tabbed out before she could see what it was. "Misato. What brings you here?"

"You mean, besides my job?"

"I meant a little more locally," he said, indicating the table.

"So did I. I need to know about Unit-04. Where have you been? I've been looking for you since the day before the battle. We really could have used it. Well, if things had gone differently."

He opened a music player on his laptop, and launched his favourite jazz playlist, which happened to double as an effective white noise source and disruptor of electronic bugs. He ran a program called ; it opened a file navigation box. He opened a folder labelled 'Definitely Not Porn', then another labelled 'Gymnasts', scrolled a long way down, and double-clicked one called haruka.mp4. The program prompted a password, hummed for a moment, and opened a copy of Unit-04's blueprints. "I've been getting my hands on this. It was constructed at Nerv Second Branch, in Nevada, to the same specs as Units -02 and -03 … and the remainder of the Eva series."

"What? There's _more_ of them? But … why haven't I heard about this? And what are they even going to use them against? If they won't give them to us, and there are only a few Angels left … oh."

Kaji nodded. "Seele's playing the different branches of Nerv off against one another. They're worried Ikari's going to make a play; they want to make sure they have the firepower to deal with whatever he tries. I don't know exactly how many more Evas they have; I do know there's a Unit-13 under construction, but there may be more, and it's also possible they skipped some numbers to mislead us. I also don't know who they have piloting them. My contacts inside Marduk say it shouldn't be possible to find so many pilots; Seele obviously has another ace up its sleeve."

Misato sighed. "Yes. Whatever cheat it is that Kaworu uses to pilot. Or however Mogami does it; she went vague when I asked her, but she implied they had different methods. Is there any way, any way at all we can get our hands on any of these Evas? The Angels keep getting stronger. These last two, we _maybe_ could have beaten either with all four Evas at once, but if the trend continues, we'll need at least one or two more by the end. Isn't there some safeguard they could install, like remote explosives, or …"

He gave a hybrid shrug and head shake. "I assume they already did with Units -02 and -03, but I also assume Ritsie's disabled them, and I assume Seele assumes that too. In any case, we can barely control Angelic technology at the best of times. I don't really blame them for not wanting to rely on that."

"It's just that it's so _stupid_. We're barely holding on as is; we're at the limit of our ability. Mankind has at least five usable Evas, more than enough to defeat the Angels, but we can only actually field two. What if they win and kill us all, because we were too busy bickering over who would operate Eva?"

"It'd be a fitting epitaph. Mankind isn't so much more unified than the Angels."

"That's the problem. Wait … you mean –?"

"I finally managed to chase up that lead," Kaji said, his face perfectly relaxed. "You were right. Seele deliberately caused Second Impact."

"I knew it. Did you find out why?"

"They had to awaken Adam in order to extract some of his stem cells. They have cloned lines of them in a few labs around the world. I don't know what they're for, though, beyond pure research."

"You don't?" Misato asked, surprised. "Even I know that. Those are what the Evas are made from. Well, their biological components, at least."

"How do you know that?"

"Mogami."

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

"I know how you feel," she said. "She told me that ages ago, and I confirmed with Ritz. That's how Eva can extend an AT Field. We never reverse-engineered the Fields at all; we cloned them. Units -02 onward are pure Adam, plus robotic parts; with Unit-00 and -01, they used some of Lilith's cells because they weren't sure they could control them. Ritsuko said something about needing more of Lilith than just a few cells for Unit-00, but didn't go into details."

"But that means Seele woke Adam in order to get the cells to build the Evas to defeat the Angels that wouldn't have been born if they hadn't woken Adam," Kaji said. "That's just stupid. There has to be more to it than that."

"Maybe they want the world to be dependent on them for saving them? To cement their own power? Or maybe they're just planning to use the mass-produced Evas to take over the world as soon as the Angels are finished."

"They already own or control most of it behind the scenes." He sighed. "There's still too much we don't know. I'm going to keep digging."

"You said 'we'. Are we on the same side, Kaji?"

"… Mostly. You were right not to trust Seele, but that doesn't mean I trust Ikari."

"Hmm," said Misato, who also wasn't happy with the man. Apart from disabling Chitose before the last battle, he had refused her request to try to synchronise Rei with Unit-01.

"You know I could never find any files on Rei that weren't obviously fabricated?" Kaji said. "I'm guessing the only reason he let Chitose stay with Rei was to stop people like me from snooping around."

"She _does_ make a better guard dog than Section Two," she said thoughtfully. "That's either genius or insanity by him, letting a homicidal rogue Seele agent protect Rei."

"Ikari's greatest strength is his ability to turn any situation to his advantage. I'm still impressed he managed to get four Evas, both Seeds, the Lance, and Nerv HQ under his control."

"The Lance?"

"It's for controlling a Seed, I think. I don't know much about it. I'm more concerned with Rei now. His decisions with her have been confusing. Almost … protective."

"He does care for her," Misato said, remembering the botched synchronisation experiment with Rei and Unit-00. "Although … maybe. Tell me what you find out. I have a war to win."

"I will," he said. She stood and left; he kept the music going and resumed his work.

…

"Mm, but for an Eva pilot, the Eagles are much more valuable than the Hawks. Those autocannon look impressive, and they work great against human enemies, but they don't do anything at all against the Angels. With them, there are only two kinds of people: those who pilot Eva, and those who support Eva. Against the third-last Angel, our side won because the Eagles kept dropping everything they needed."

"Third-last? What about the last two?"

"We only won that battle because – um. I think if I say what I want, I'll say something violating my NDA. Sorry."

"It's okay. But don't you still use artillery sometimes? They still call for it during battles, don't they?"

"They do, but it's pretty cosmetic. Like, the Angel's just thrown the Evas off and it's about to give one the coup de grâce," she said it in French first, then translated after a moment's hesitation, "and the arty will blast it, just to keep it off balance and give the pilots a moment to regroup. I've only been allowed in one battle, but I've watched the footage of the others, and the arty never actually does any damage; it just buys a few seconds for the Evas to get into position, and then they finish it."

"It's kind of a shame that there's so much really cool hardware and tactics and everything, that's just obsolete because we're not fighting conventional enemies, don't you think? You know, end of an era and all."

"Mm … I actually like it, because it means we have to invent even more technology instead. I mean, I pilot a giant robot that shoots forcefields."

"Heh. Yeah. They didn't have anything like _that_ in Iraq."

"Hm?"

"The Gulf War? The Western powers fought this dictator there. Japan didn't send troops, but we did send matériel. That was back when aircraft ruled everything, and stealth basically made the Americans invincible."

"Really? Heh. Our idea of stealth these days is to lead with the giant robot that isn't painted bright red." They laughed. "Tell me about – actually, give me a moment; I promised I'd check in." She pulled out her phone and tapped out a text with both thumbs. _[I still haven't killed the Commander. See? You're worrying for no reason.]_

"With your parents, or Nerv?" Kensuke asked.

"Neither. Nerv doesn't worry about me; they know I can handle myself. My mother's dead, and I'm, uh, estranged from my father."

"Really? That's so weird, my mother's dead too, since I was little. Do you remember yours?"

"Yes. She died just a few days before I arrived here."

"Oh. Wow. I'm an idiot."

"No, it's fine," she said sincerely.

"Still, I'm sorry. What happened?"

Chitose paused to think how to phrase it without lying, because she knew she was awful at it. "We lived at this … pilot's training camp, sort of. I was talking to a friend by IM, and then, without warning, someone decided to blow the camp up." She spoke with the air of one describing her summer vacation. "There was a military base there; an ammo dump with an N2 mine exploded. Almost everyone but me and a few soldiers died. I was lucky to escape."

Specifically, Seele's garrison hadn't caught her after she set the dump alight because a snowstorm had hit while she was running for it. _Well, that, and because dead soldiers can't search_. The thought brought a smile to her face, but she repressed it before Kensuke could notice.

"Wow. Do you know who did it?"

"I know they got away. Don't worry about it. I know it sounds horrible, but I wasn't at all close to my mother." She'd noticed that most Japanese were consistently respectful toward their parents, even ones who were really bad at parenting. She made a mental note to ask Shinji about his father sometime. "She was a surrogate, actually, and we didn't really have a relationship at all. Now, I just want to think about the future, you know?"

"That's … so you don't want revenge? Like, at all?"

"I don't. I'm sure the person who did it had a good reason."

"Okay." Kensuke thought this was more than a little weird, but he'd been having a great time with a reasonably attractive girl for half an hour, with almost no awkwardness, and she was an Eva pilot. He could overlook a lot for all that. "But your father wasn't on the base with you?"

"No, he didn't live there. He works overseas, with the UN. We had an argument afterwards, when I came here; he tried to forbid me from piloting, and I … disagreed. We're not speaking now."

His first thought was to tell her that she should smooth things over with her father, but his second thought was that one shouldn't lecture a girl half an hour into a first date, and also he didn't have the backbone to try. Besides, he could tell that there was no way she'd listen to him. "So, uh … if it wasn't him, who were you texting?"

"Kaworu-chan."

"He isn't living with you and Ayanami, is he? Why do you need to check in with him?"

"Well … you can keep a secret, can't you?"

"Of course."

Chitose glanced around to make sure no-one else was in earshot, not that anyone seemed to care about the two teenagers chatting at one end of the tram. "Because we're engaged."

"… What."

"He's my fiancé," she clarified. "We're going to marry."

"I know what engagement means," Kensuke snapped.

"You seem angry," she probed.

"Well … I mean … yeah? Why didn't you tell me that earlier? Why were you even on a dating website if you're already going to marry some other guy?"

"What do you mean? Shippers dot com is a friend-finding site, not a dating site. It even says so in the tagline."

He blinked several times. _Typical_. The one time he found a girl he liked, she turned out to be naïvely literal-minded, and he ignored it, and that turned out to be his undoing.

"And even if it were, is it a thing that engaged people can't date?"

Kensuke opened his mouth to answer that, then decided to just power through it instead. It wasn't worth getting angry at her over; if he should be angry with anyone, it was himself. "So … how are you and Nagisa engaged? Is there, like, a pilot matchmaking service?"

"Our parents arranged it. Part of the idea was that we'd start a family of Eva pilots and we'd all be guaranteed good careers." A bigger part of the idea was that Seele realised she liked him and offered him as a reward for good behaviour. If he hadn't told her that he'd started piloting, she might even have believed Seele intended to keep their end of the bargain. "Normally I wouldn't let anyone else tell me who I had to marry, but I do really like Kaworu. He's special, you know?"

"That's one way to put it," Kensuke said, thinking of what Toji had said about him.

"It doesn't hurt that he's gorgeous," she added dreamily.

"Yes," Kensuke said stiffly.

"We have to avoid each other because it'd be very bad luck if we saw one another before the wedding. It's annoying, because it'll probably be a while, but at least we have phones and IM."

"I thought that was only on the wedding day. And I thought you were more of a sciency type than superstitious like that?"

She shrugged. She and Kaworu had a personal truce, but she wasn't stupid. Seele would order him to kill her at some point; it really would be bad luck if he obeyed, and succeeded. She planned to wed him after his S2 organ was surgically removed and Seele was purged; without his AT Field or anyone giving him orders, he wouldn't be a threat to her, and neither would have any need to murder anyone. "I am, just not in this one case." She leaned toward Kensuke and hugged him. He froze. It was the first time he could remember that a girl had voluntarily touched him; she felt funny, a strange combination of soft and bony. "Thanks for promising not to tell anyone. I never realised how nice it would feel to tell someone else about that."

"Um. No problem. I should, uh, probably get going. See you."

"Oh. See you," said Chitose, as Kensuke extricated himself and left the tram, trying not to look like he was fleeing from a girl who had turned him down. "What an odd boy." She watched him walk away, before returning to the scenes of construction around her.

…

Two giants faced off over a virtual beach, one red, one orange. The red held a double-ended glaive, the orange a katana and wakizashi. The blades all glowed white.

"This is a training simulation," Misato reminded them. "Anything goes, including crippling and lethal strikes. There are no pauses; a bout goes until either Eva records critical damage. There are no time-outs. Go!"

Asuka moved first, leading with an uppercut that could have cut the digital Unit-03 in half; Kaworu jumped sideways, then forward, bringing his sword down. Asuka twirled her weapon, catching it and throwing it aside; Kaworu ducked under the butt of her weapon as it followed through, and she kneed him in the face. He stabbed her through the ankle with his short sword; she chopped into his torso; he sliced into her abdomen, then reversed his blade and skewered her.

"Time," said Misato. The sim rippled, and suddenly both mechas were back in perfect condition, the dull phantom pain ebbing away to nothing. "Double kill. Not acceptable by either of you. When you get a good hit in, guard against a reprise by your opponent. The last thing we want is one of you killed by an Angel's death throes. God knows they try it often enough. Again!"

They went back and forth for twenty minutes, one gaining the upper hand, then the other. They were closely matched; Asuka's synch rate was slightly higher and she was more aggressive, but Kaworu had better technique, and was particularly good at catching her polearm with his short sword and riposting with his other weapon.

They lost track of the number of bouts, before a blue and a yellow giant materialised beside them.

"Can we change partners?" Chitose asked. "I think we two are over-training; we're fighting each other's specific style within the sim, more than just fighting well."

"Go ahead," Misato said, indifferent.

The Eva pilots exchanged glances.

"You and me, Schatz?" Kaworu asked.

Chitose grinned, showing teeth in the Western style. "Not today. I want to catch you when we're both fresh."

"I look forward to it," Kaworu said, returning the look, and he and Rei vanished into a duplicate sim.

"What about me, then?" Asuka asked. "If I'm not going to spar with another real pilot, what's even the point of –"

Chitose jabbed; Asuka blocked, and Chitose turned it into a feint that flowed into an uppercut to Asuka's jaw, then swept out her legs, elbowed her in the back of the head, and drove a knife-hand into her plug, pulverising it.

Misato blinked.

"You do realise I've done all the same training you and Kaworu have, don't you?" Chitose asked, as the sim reset. "The reason I wanted to swap partners was because Rei's not even close to being a match for me, not when she's in the prototype Eva with half my synch rate, so Makoto artificially made it stronger, which was too unrealistic."

Asuka cracked her neck left, then right, then rolled her shoulders. She held out a hand; her glaive appeared in it.

"If you want a real fight," she said, "you've got it."

Chitose opened her hand, and a pallet rifle materialised. She levelled it and opened fire; Asuka threw up her AT Field and angled herself so the bullets glanced off her armour without penetrating, then lunged, her weapon tracing a horizontal arc toward Chitose's midsection. Chitose skipped backward, giving herself a moment to empty her gun's magazine, before opening her pylons and drawing dual prog knives. She dodged Asuka's thrust, reversed her grip on one knife, and stabbed it into Asuka's arm; Asuka let go with her other hand and punched Chitose in the face. She stepped backward, pulled out the knife, and threw it; Chitose dodged, but was flat-footed when Asuka lunged again. She parried with her second knife, which snapped in half; she grabbed the glaive's shaft and roundhouse-kicked Asuka in the chest. Asuka moved with it, drew her own prog knife, and gutted Chitose; Chitose winced, seized Asuka's wrist, and flipped her over her hip, then stomped on her shoulder, shattering it, and pulled out the knife for the finishing blow. Asuka's leg snapped up and crunched against the rear armour over Chitose's plug. The words 'pilot incapacitated' flashed, and the sim reset.

"You have good pain tolerance," Chitose observed. "And you don't give up. I thought you were done when I got your arm."

"I _don't lose_," Asuka snapped.

"That's hard to pull off consistently. My thing is that I don't make the same mistake twice, which is easier, I think. I assumed the sim would cut your synch rate from sympathetic pain." She held out her hands, and a heavy needle gun fell into them. "I won't this time."

"You're making the mistake of relying on guns in a duel again."

"I'm going for a heavier weapon this time, since the last one couldn't pierce your armour. Besides, I'm not relying on them. I use a ranged weapon at range, and mêlée weapons for mêlée. I don't want to limit myself tactically. Why do you?"

"Shut up and go."

But at that moment, a siren sounded.

"Is that –?"

"Angel," Misato said tersely. The sim vanished, and suddenly the pilots were sitting in the simulation bodies in the Pribnow Box. "Asuka, Kaworu, you're up. Rei, Chitose, stand by."

It was possibly their record fastest deployment, since the pilots were already on base and even suited up. They launched early enough that they could run to the beachhead, switching out their power cables as they went, rather than use the more expensive rocket planes, and still arrive before the target was close enough to identify. The two reserves watched from inside the simulation bodies, where they were out of everyone's way.

"It's – it's the azure pattern again!"

"Son of a," Misato undertoned, dismayed. "This is getting old. Ritz, you said we killed it for good!"

"That's not the same one we fought last time," Ritsuko said.

The yellow-and-grey Angel broke the surface of the ocean, now ringed, striped, speckled, and cross-hatched with glittering brown scabs. Units -02 and -03 flanked it, prog weapons levelled. "Really?" said Misato. "Because it sure looks like it."

"Well, it isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because the last one is where we left it," said Ritsuko. "Here's real-time feed from the reservoir." She called up a video, of a pool of orange liquid, little waves lapping at its concrete walls. "It's not coming back to life. _They_ must be multiple sub-instances of one Angel, in the same way that the tenth kept throwing pieces of itself at us. The tenth 'learned' by correcting its aim; this one learns by adding armour whenever we hurt it. It's a good thing the Angels are stupid; if they could extrapolate, it'd be completely plated right now."

"Does that mean that the real Angel is going to attack at some point, like the tenth did?"

"Well, this is the fourth one it's sent that found us … so I'm guessing no, it'll just keep sending these spawns until it wears us down by attrition."

"Fine. That just means we'll have to flush out the real Angel ourselves."

"And how are you going to do that?"

"They all come from the same direction, south, so unless it's smart enough to cover its tracks – and it's not – that's where the real Angel is. Either there's something spewing out city-destroying abominations that the Australians have neglected to mention – which is possible – or it's the Antarctic Angel. But finding it is your job, with those robot subs. Mine is just destroying them. Speaking of which …"

The Angel pounced on Asuka; she sliced at its left forepaw this time, lopping it cleanly off, and followed the motion through with an uppercut. This was pure muscle memory; the blade scraped along the scar Kaworu gave it last time. The Angel swiped at her, its claws digging gouges into her armour.

"No, don't help or anything!" Asuka snarled. "Just stand there, dusting your hair with desaturated glitter like usual!"

Kaworu was in fact trying to carve into the Angel, but his style really didn't work; he relied on multiple fast, shallow cuts designed for fighting humans that bled, and which worked brilliantly against soft targets, but which skidded right off the Angel's armour, and probably actually made things worse by giving it more scars for next time. It took a swing at him, denting his chest armour.

A volley of artillery and rockets smacked into it from behind. Its AT Field held, but it had to brace for a moment, giving the pilots time to regroup. Kaworu leapt back and traded his long knives for a needle gun, but Asuka was faster.

She dropped her weapon, twisted, and rolled to her feet. "I am _not_ in the mood for this." She prised her fingers between two armour ridges, tore them apart, and drove her knee into its chest, with an effect similar to that of squeezing a pimple. She kneed it four more times rapid-fire, spraying its insides over the beach. "Are we done here?"

Maya was distinctly green. "Target is silent."

"Great." Asuka folded her arms inside her plug and threw her head back. "If I have any synch tests scheduled this week, cancel them."

Ritsuko shot Misato a look. "What's eating her?"

Misato shrugged.

…

Asuka wandered for a while in her search. Her first thought was the school, but that was long gone, having taken several direct hits of acid balls from the fifteenth. She spent a while looking for a vacant theatre or other performance hall, before thinking to find the nearest intact church. It was unlocked and empty, and happened to contain an organ. Perfect. She had with her piano arrangements for Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Rachmaninov's Prelude in G minor, and Solveig's Song. She sat down and began to play.


	9. Azrael

Down in the Geofront was the only area without the constant noise of cicadas and construction. There was still the burble of conversation, digital beeping, and other noise produced by the operation of Nerv, but even that was silent in the infirmary, where the only sounds were the gentle hums of air conditioning and fluorescent lights, and the breathing of the injured and their visitors.

Doctor Venkatesh's stem cell therapy, while a work in progress, had dramatically improved Shinji's health. His lungs were back up to about fifteen percent efficacy; he had been taken out of the perflubron tank to see visitors, and instead put in a larger, airtight ward filled with pure oxygen. It was enough to cause oxygen poisoning with extended visits, so Rei was forced to wear a gas mask to reduce airflow while she sat beside his bed, but people visiting just for a minute didn't bother.

Shinji had felt terrible when he was first hospitalised, because of the burning sensation throughout his chest, throat, and eyes, which had taken a few days to wear off completely. After that, he'd spent a while feeling sorry for himself. After that, he'd accepted his lot, and found a kind of peace.

He wasn't happy, exactly, that he was stuck in a hospital with two burnt-out lungs only slowly recovering with the help of a mad scientist, but it was the nearest thing to a holiday he'd had in a year. He'd had constant drills and synch tests since the third Angel, interspersed with battles roughly once a month in which he was frequently wounded. In the infirmary, he was left to himself. The exception was Rei, who spent her free time sitting beside him, keeping silent watch. Sometimes she read; sometimes she just stared into space, or at him. Somehow, it wasn't awkward, except on the one occasion he had tried to make small talk. Instead, they sat or lay there, accepting one another's presence, him with his SDAT playing in his ears on an infinite loop.

Rei sat. Half of it was because she was going to be waiting for the end no matter where she was; she didn't have anywhere better to be. The other half was that he needed someone to be there for him. The Second wouldn't, their guardian couldn't, and his father didn't. That last thought, which she had once ignored, had been slowly dissolving her equanimity for the past few months. If it were true that duty were everything, then that ought to include duty to one's family, but the Commander was not watching over his son.

The door hissed open; in walked Kaworu, who never bothered with a mask. He liked to show off his smile, and his eyes were already red, so it didn't matter much if they got a little irritated by the atmosphere. Shinji's eyes lit up; he stopped his SDAT and waved the other boy into the chair opposite Rei's.

"Hello," Kaworu said, to Shinji and to Rei. Rei regarded him neutrally; she neither liked nor disliked him, and while she certainly didn't trust him, for the same reasons Misato didn't, she was willing to accept him as long as he made Shinji happy. "I hope you're feeling strong today. You have quite a few visitors lined up and still coming."

"Really?" Shinji croaked, eyes lighting up in hope. "Is –?"

Kaworu sighed and shook his head. Shinji slumped. "Counting myself and Miss Ayanami, you have nine good friends who care about you, Shinji. And more, who were only turned away because of security regulations. This is Nerv Headquarters, after all."

"I guess," said Shinji, not wanting to admit that the number nine made him feel a bit better; it was much higher than he'd expected. Usually it was only Rei; Kaworu came by sometimes, and Misato had dropped by once or twice, but only for a minute before rushing back home or back to work. She tried, but she worked the equivalent of two full-time jobs, and she just didn't have the time to stay with him all day, like Rei did, minus her training and synch tests. He couldn't imagine who all of the other six could be. "Thanks, Kaworu."

"Are you sure you don't want me to bring a book?" he asked.

Shinji shrugged and smiled under his mask. "I like to let my mind go empty. Books don't do that. Besides, I could borrow one of Ayanami's if I did get bored."

Kaworu smiled a little wider at that, as though sharing a joke.

"Have you and Asuka got _pezzo elegiaco_ down yet?" Shinji asked.

Kaworu snorted, much less elegantly than usual.

"Huh?" said Shinji. "I mean, with only two of you, you should make only about two thirds as many mistakes. And you've had a month to work at it …"

"You do realise that _Pilot Soryu_ dislikes me, don't you?" Kaworu asked, stressing the title that Asuka still made him use. "We haven't made a single bar of progress. We've only been able to bring ourselves to even try twice, and those sessions weren't exactly productive."

"I know she can be … well, her, but she's like that with everyone. She doesn't like me either. If it were a problem, all three of us together should have been even worse, shouldn't we?"

Kaworu gave him a look of equal parts pity and incredulity. "Perhaps her dislike of you cancelled out with her dislike of me," he said, with less sarcasm in his tone than his words; it went over Shinji's head. "At any rate, we haven't been improving. I would bet that that will change when our leader returns, though."

"What? Leader? But – I'm the cellist, and –"

Shinji could have gone through any number of reasons why he wasn't any sort of leader and never would be. He was the weakest one, the most shy except Rei and without her strength, he wasn't even a great pilot, and if he did have the most kills, those were all either because he was the only pilot available at the time or because the others screened for him. Asuka had been elected leader when they were going to fight the ninth, and even Rei had taken charge more than him. Before he could voice any of those points, Kaworu laughed and stood to leave.

"I'll be back later, but I'd better not keep the others waiting too long. And I don't want my hair to get too bleached. Happy birthday, Shinji."

The door opened, and Kaworu left, to be replaced by Fuyutsuki.

"Subcommander," Shinji said, surprised; he didn't generally expect the people at the top to care about him, certainly not enough to visit.

"Hello, Ikari," Fuyutsuki said, giving something between a nod and a bow. "I hope you're recovering well?"

"Doctor Venkatesh says the therapy is starting to take hold, sir; I should be back at full health in another week, he says."

"Marvellous. I can't tell you how devastated I was to hear about your injuries, even with everything else going on. It would be truly tragic if anything were to happen to one of our bravest warriors."

Shinji's mind immediately and involuntarily dissected this. Fuyutsuki had specified 'one of'. Realistically, he was probably just upset about losing a pilot. And, of course, there was the fact that it was him here, and not his father. "Thank you, sir."

Fuyutsuki didn't see the need to burden Shinji with the knowledge that his father had advised Fuyutsuki not to come, and that he had had to creatively interpret this as not being an order. "I hope you know that Nerv's resources are at your disposal; anything you need beyond this treatment, you have only to ask."

Shinji couldn't imagine what that could possibly be; it wasn't as though he knew better than Dr Venkatesh what would work for treating acid-burnt lungs. "Thank you, sir."

Fuyutsuki nodded and turned to leave. "By the way," he added, "that third-last Angel? Everyone I've asked agrees that that was the most impressive battle we've seen yet."

"Everyone? Sir?"

Fuyutsuki smiled and left, as he didn't feel like lying or admitting that he specifically didn't ask Shinji's father.

"You are not alone," Rei whispered. Shinji glanced at her, surprised.

This time, two people came in.

"Toji? Kensuke?" Shinji rasped, impressed in spite of himself. "I didn't think they'd let you down here."

"Major Katsuragi gave us these," Kensuke said, holding up a laminated visitor's card dangling from a lanyard about his neck. "Happy birthday, bro. So you got fumed, huh?"

"Is that what they're calling it?"

"Some other people who didn't get to shelter quick enough have breathing problems," Toji said, his accent and mask combining to make him rather hard to understand. "They've been getting treatment at the general hospital. I didn't think it got bad enough to keep anyone in the ICU for a month, though."

"I was outside for longer than anyone should have been," Shinji said. There had been unspecified 'issues' with getting some civilians to their shelters, but there were more of those than there were ingress points for the Geofront, so he was worse affected than any of them, to his knowledge. "How's it going up on the surface?"

"They rebuilt the school a few blocks away," Toji said. "The old spot's kaput, it was hit too hard. Classes are still boring as hell. Even worse, without either of you" his eyes flicked to Rei and back; she gave no response "and Minami and Sato both left, too. And everyone who's still here is pretty down. You can't even make eye contact with the Red Terror without her throwing something at you. I mean, something heavier than usual."

"Okay," said Shinji, thinking that maybe it was actually a good thing that she hadn't come to see him, and wondering what exactly was bothering her so much.

"The city's mostly back to being an actual city by now," Kensuke volunteered. "It was a mess, that last attack destroyed pretty much everything. Or I guess you would have seen photos?"

"Er," said Shinji, who had in fact seen no such thing.

"Jeez, they let you pilot Eva but they don't even show you the city?"

There was an awkward pause.

"Get better soon, will you?" said Toji. "Kensuke keeps dragging me to the arcade. Someone else needs to get clobbered for a change."

"I'm still surprised at how you can fight giant aliens in real life but suck so hard at the arcade," Kensuke said to Shinji.

"Um," said Shinji, acutely conscious that he wasn't actually very good at fighting Angels.

There was a knock at the door.

"Jeez, impatient much," Toji said, but he and Kensuke left promptly anyway, because it was Misato. She smiled, passed them, and sat beside Shinji.

"Hi, Shinji," she said. "Sorry I didn't come earlier."

"It's okay," he said. "I know you're busy. You've always had long hours."

"It's _not_ okay. Someone I care about, a lot, almost died, and I've barely visited."

"Your work …"

"I know. It always comes back to that for us both, doesn't it?" she asked. "No matter what you want, it always comes back to you needing to pilot, because no-one else can make Unit-01 move, and if it doesn't move, the Angels win. And no matter what I want, I can barely find time to visit you. I promised to take you in; that means I have to look after you when you're hurt."

That dispassionate, relentless part of his mind parsed the phrase 'have to' as meaning she felt duty-bound, rather than actually caring.

"I can't even stay now, on your birthday, for more than a few minutes," she went on, bitterly. "I'm on break now."

"It's okay," he said again.

She took his hand and rubbed it with her thumb. "Pen-Pen misses you too, you know." Shinji snorted. "That nice lady who lives downstairs baked me some sata andagi as a get well present, but either he or Asuka got them first, I'm not sure who. There's a cake outside; they're waiting until everyone's come in before they cut it up."

"Am I allowed to eat cake?" asked Shinji, who had been put on a specific diet by Doctor Venkatesh.

"It's your birthday. You can have one slice. Cake makes everyone feel better. I should give you a beer, too."

"That one might be pushing it."

Misato chuckled. "Maybe. I should let your last guests in for a moment. I'll see you again, though, I promise."

She stood and left, holding the door open for Asuka and Hikari. Shinji's eyes lit up; Asuka was one of two people he'd really wanted to visit him who hadn't. "Asuka! And Horaki."

"Hey," said Asuka, looking awkward.

Rei gave her a look. She'd obviously been coerced into coming by Hikari and Misato.

Hikari repressed a huff at Asuka's stubbornness, and smiled at Shinji. "Hello, to you too. Haven't we known each other long enough for you to call me Hikari?" She wouldn't normally have said that, but she needed to be nice to make up for Asuka, who'd taken things harder than she admitted to anyone, least of all herself, and who didn't have healthy coping mechanisms.

Asuka frowned at Rei. "Have you been sitting here this whole time? Everyone else has had to wait in line for longer."

Rei said nothing.

"I'm glad I was let in," Hikari babbled. "I was worried I wouldn't be, or Suzuhara or Aida, but Major Katsuragi got us passes. School's going really well, you know, although it's quiet with so many people missing. I'll try to get you your print-outs, if I can. You too, Ayanami. Um. The city's still going ahead with the hanami, it's in three weeks now. Will you be better by then, do you know?"

"Um, I think so. Doctor Venkatesh thinks it'll take one more week. It's one of those things where it takes most of the time to get set up, but once it gets going, it's finished pretty quickly."

"Oh, that's good. Can you talk about it, or –?"

"Sorry. It's a secret method, I had to sign an NDA early on." Probably partly because of the extensive use of stem cells, and a cocktail of high-tech drugs. If only more of them were anaesthetics; having part of his body regrowing was more painful, and specifically itchy, than he'd expected.

"I see. Will you be going to the festival, then? It's really fun; I go every year. You get to dress up, and if there's someone you like" she threw a significant and very obvious look at Asuka "it's a good thing to ask them to."

"Well," he said. He hated crowds. On the other hand, it only came up once a year, and he might feel differently in a fortnight. "What about you, Asuka?"

"No," she said immediately. "It's stupid. There'll be all these old people, and rides meant for little kids, and who even cares about cherry blossoms anyway."

Hikari opened her mouth to contradict this, but Shinji smiled and shrugged. "I guess I won't go either, then."

Hikari tried to work out whether this counted as them going on some sort of neurotic introvert-date, or they were just wussing out to sit in and watch TV, but Asuka gave an involuntary little smile, so she left it.

"Nerv work is still boring," Asuka said. "They keep having us do synch tests. And a few training sims against each other, which are better, I guess. I'm still the best, of course, but the others aren't bad. You'll have to work once you're out of here."

She won more than she lost, but with a rate only slightly above fifty percent. Kaworu was more graceful, but she could beat him by sheer aggression; he didn't quite have her killer instinct or single-minded obsession. Chitose was clumsier and had a lower synch rate, but she kept looking up martial arts moves online and incorporating them into her attacks and counters. Most of them didn't actually work at Eva-scale or she did them wrong, but she would discard those after a few failures and try another. Asuka was curious about who would win if Kaworu and Chitose sparred, but the only time they had been opposed in the sims, Chitose had refused to do anything except dodge; after Kaworu killed her twice Misato had set them both fighting Evabots in their own private worlds for half an hour.

"I've been wondering … whether I even should keep piloting," he said, faltering as she turned a sharp look on him. "I mean, I was hurt again, because of it, and …"

"Are you stupid? You were hurt when you _weren't_ piloting. It was only because you were stuck outside of your Eva for so long that it happened."

"Yeah, but if I'd gone to a shelter …"

"If you had run away, you mean?" He flinched away from her piercing blue gaze. "Don't tell me that there are more pilots than Evas. Both of those two idiots napped through that battle. If the Angels hadn't weakened each other so much first, even I wouldn't have won on my own, or even with the Honours Student."

He looked at the ceiling tiles.

"So hurry up and get better, because I'm not going to let you miss another battle. Got it?" He was silent; she leaned over and shook him. "Got it?!"

"Okay! Ow! Asuka!"

"And don't you forget it," she said. Hikari giggled.

At that moment, the door slid open, revealing Ritsuko.

"Oh!" said Shinji. "Doctor Akagi." He definitely hadn't expected her; she had never been cruel to him, per se, but nor did she give the impression of caring for him as a person, only as an asset.

"Good morning, Shinji. How are you feeling?"

"Um, I'm feeling much better. Doctor Venkatesh is really … he gets results."

"So he does. Will you be able to pilot?"

That explained it: she still didn't care for him as a person. "I guess I'll keep doing it. I mean, I'm the only one who can pilot Unit-01, so …"

"I mean right now, specifically," Ritsuko clarified. "Because there's another Angel coming."

"There is?" said Asuka, checking her phone. "Why didn't you alert me?"

"We did. This room is in a Faraday cage; some of the equipment here is delicate. So is the patient, for that matter."

"I've got to go," Asuka told Hikari importantly. "Shinji …" She didn't finish that thought, and instead turned and pushed past the scientist, toward the cages.

"You're on standby inside the Geofront," Ritsuko told Rei, who nodded, stood, and left, all without saying a word. Ritsuko turned to Shinji. "And you?"

"Are you serious?" Hikari blurted out, then caught herself and blushed. "I mean. I'm sorry. But … he's literally going to die if he leaves this room."

"We can increase the concentration of oxygen in LCL. In fact, that's what we did when first treating him, and Gyandev keeps his regular tank properly oxygenated."

"It's okay," said Shinji. "If I have to … to protect the others …"

Ritsuko attached a mask over Shinji's mouth and nose to a hose and oxygen cylinder on his bed, then motioned Hikari to help her wheel it out into the corridor, where the other students were waiting with a large chocolate cake. Ritsuko pushed Shinji past them without a word; a moment later, Chitose ran up.

"Hello, Doctor Akagi," she said. With her long legs, she never seemed to get out of breath when she ran around. "Shinji. And, um. Class President?"

"Representative," Hikari corrected automatically, too worried to be irritated.

"We're in a hurry," said Ritsuko, pushing on, but Chitose moved around and blocked her.

"I should pilot Unit-01," she said.

Ritsuko blinked. "Didn't you say you didn't want to, in case it went berserk?"

Hikari frowned and tried to guess exactly what 'berserk' could mean in context.

"I don't," Chitose said bluntly. "But Shinji is injured."

"Thank you," he mumbled into his mask, because she was apparently the only person who had internalised that.

"And he's out of practice," she elaborated. "So if he goes out there, he might make a mistake, which could get one or more of himself, Asuka, and Kaworu killed, and maybe even cause Third Impact, if he does badly enough. I'd be safer piloting than sitting here."

Shinji wilted. She was right, too; if he failed when the others were depending on him, all three combat Evas could be destroyed, and then they'd be completely doomed.

"You've never synchronised with Unit-01 before," Ritsuko pointed out. "There's a high chance it could go berserk, which, during a battle …"

"I know," Chitose said. "But it doesn't look like Shinji is going to achieve anything at all right now. If you restrain Unit-01 and have the other pilots on standby for if it does go berserk, then you won't be risking much, and we could gain an entire Eva for this battle."

Ritsuko considered this.

"Suit up, and I'll ask Misato. As Operations Director, it's her call." Chitose nodded, smiled, and hurried off. "Horaki, stuff your fingers in your ears and go back to the waiting room unless you want to spend the rest of the day signing every NDA ever printed." She pulled out her phone. "Misato? Mogami's volunteered to pilot in Shinji's place. Which do we use?"

Misato blinked. She'd thought Chitose didn't trust Kaworu in the field. Perhaps she'd misjudged their relationship. Or perhaps she meant to backstab him first. "Is she an option? Can you synchronise her to Unit-01?"

"Probably."

"Can you quantify that?"

"Not with any precision; it depends on too many unknown unknowns. I don't even know why she can pilot Unit-03, since she obviously isn't using my method. Seele owns part of the tech for working with the Adamite lines, so I assumed that they had hard-coded an override into the production models to let their own operatives pilot, and that this is how she and Kaworu can synchronise. If that were true, then that override wouldn't exist in the test model, because I oversaw its construction; so she shouldn't be able to. On the other hand, she knows how temperamental Eva can be; I doubt she'd volunteer if she didn't have a good reason to think she could safely synchronise. And I'm not confident about the override theory, because if I had made a thing like that, I'd have included a back door so I could disable it, which they would have used and kept her out of Unit-03. So, call it sixty-forty in her favour."

Misato thought back to Shinji's thin frame, and the photos she'd seen of what was left of his lungs, and the video of the inbound Angel. Magi had classified it as an AGGRAVATED ALERT all by itself, its AT Field was so strong. He really, really wouldn't want to fight this one. "Keep him on standby. We'll try her first. How long will it take to synch her?"

"If we do it by the book, half an hour, but if we assume it'll be fine and skip the redundant safety steps, ten minutes."

"We're short on time. Do that. If there's any issues, we'll abort immediately. And keep the LCL overpressure switch handy, even if she does synch. Just in case." She switched lines. "Asuka, stay where you are. You're making sure Unit-01 activates without any problems."

"What about me?" asked Kaworu, who was already on the surface.

"Help the military set up. Rei's here too, and Unit-01's locked in place."

"Why am I always stuck babysitting? What's wrong with Unit-01?" Asuka asked.

"Nothing," said Misato, guessing that she wouldn't be thrilled to hear that Shinji was still out of action. "But it's been a while and there've been software updates. Safe than sorry, and all."

Asuka grunted and closed her link.

Chitose, wearing her black-and-yellow plugsuit, hurried along the walkway to her plug and climbed in. "By the way, Doctor, I was wondering – why do you smoke? Don't you know it's really unhealthy?"

"Nicotine is a nootropic," Ritsuko said, loading the synch program. "My mind is the only weapon I have against the Angels. If I survive long enough to die of cancer, that means it's done its job."

"Okay. Then why not take other drugs that won't give you cancer?"

"I do," said Ritsuko, who also drank copious amounts of coffee and frequently used modafinil and pramiracetam. "Smoking also happens to be addictive."

"Hmm." Chitose sniffed, derailing that train of thought. "Does Unit-02 smell of Asuka? This one smells of Shinji. And Unit-03 did too, of Kaworu. What about Unit-00? Rei, does your Eva smell of you?"

Ritsuko ignored this. "Beginning synchronisation," she narrated. "Swapping in data, remapping nerve connections. We're following the instructions from the full checklist, but we're skipping most. Begin at 108, then 109 and straight to 113."

"Nerve connections in place," said Maya. "Initiating second contact."

The bridge turned red, and a warning tone sounded.

"Nerve pulses reversing! It's rejecting the signal!"

"Cut the connections," Ritsuko ordered.

"Wait!" said Chitose. "I can do this."

"_Cut them,_" Ritsuko repeated.

Maya hit the key.

"It's rejecting that signal, too."

"Eject the plug."

"Nothing's going through! And … we've lost the video feed to the entry plug!"

"_Unbelievable,_" Ritsuko muttered, sending tertiary overrides and diagnostic commands without effect. "I listen to her for one minute, and we lose an Eva before even launching. How could it _possibly_ screw up this badly? The video has its own circuit; it doesn't even interface with Eva." She gave a sigh of disgust. "Asuka, Rei, move to Unit-01's cage and stand by." She muted the line. "It's not thrashing around," she realised. "So it's … neither accepting nor rejecting her? It won't even let her eject?" She shook her head. "Yui, sometimes I wonder about you."

Chitose sat in the dark plug, her eyes slowly adjusting. "Hello? I … Ikari Yui? Oh, that explains so much. I have so many questions for you! What – no, I'm not – well, yes, I am, but only a little, and I'm on your side, I'm friends with your son. Yes, he's outside. He doesn't want to. Yes. I want that too. Remember the one with all the spikes? How there was an orange thing like you, and it pulled the attack around so he didn't hit you or your son? That was me. Yes. You're welcome. Thank you. Another's here. He wants to hurt him. You can stop him, but you need me or him to help, and he's too hurt. The spiky one's brother did that. Technically, I suppose, slightly, but I want them dead, more than anything. To save everyone. Yes."

"Nerve pulses … resuming," Maya said, surprised. "Senpai, can they do that?"

"Yui can do whatever she wants to do," Ritsuko said. "She always was strong-willed. Is the pilot still alive and human?"

"Sure. Let's make them pay," Chitose told the Eva, her tone still light and airy. She took a moment to appreciate that Nerv had just given her what was quite possibly the most powerful Eva that would ever be made; it was no stronger than the production models, yet, but its Lilithian genes gave it a ludicrous amount of potential, in the same way that humans are no stronger than apes, but one lives in tribes whereas the other is a few generations away from terraforming entire planets. Then she flicked the lights, video, and black box back on.

Ritsuko raised an eyebrow. Her synch rate had levelled off at 82.4%, the exact same score she had in Unit-03, two points below Shinji at last check. That meant Yui had literally no measurable effect on her synch rate. That was supposed to be impossible; even if the pilot didn't depend on the imprint to synchronise, it should have some effect, probably reducing her synch score because she wasn't Yui's child.

Chitose blinked: Unit-02 was looming over her. "Oh, hello! I'm sorry, I think there was a problem with this plug, but it's working now."

"You," said Asuka. "What are you doing here?"

"Piloting," Chitose explained.

"_Where's Shinji._"

"In the hospital, I assume. Or maybe on standby."

"Akagi said he was supposed to pilot, not you!"

"He's still hurt. I'm not. Isn't it logical to use the healthiest pilot available?"

"He can handle it!"

"Maybe."

"Not _maybe, definitely_."

"I can definitely handle it too. Why would we prefer to field him than me?"

"I don't know, because he's killed the most Angels and you've killed none?"

"To be fair, I've only been in one battle, where I screened for him. He told me I deserved equal credit for that one. And I'd beat him in a training sim."

"That's worthless on a real battlefield."

"He's moving gingerly, you saw. I've been training for the past month, and he's out of practice. Plus, if he's hurt again, he might take even longer to recover, and then he'd be weakened for the next battle. And also, he might –"

Asuka abruptly deflated. "Whatever," she said. "Let's go kill the stupid Angel."

Misato rolled her eyes. That had taken long enough. "Evas launch!"

The fifteenth Angel had hit them at long range, knocking out most of their catapults and destroying much of the city before they were even in a position to respond. Part of the rebuilding effort was dedicated to installing new catapult tunnels leading outside the city limits to prevent that from happening again; one tunnel happened to exit only a few hundred metres from their destination.

Asuka had gone back to sulking. "What do we know about the Angel?" Chitose asked Misato, as though shooting along an electromagnetic elevator in a giant battle mech happened every day.

"Forwarding live video to your HUD," Maya said, and the feed popped up.

"That reminds me of the videos I saw …"

Misato finished the thought. "… of the fifth Angel, yes."

It was a great tetrahedron, floating along over the hills around the western coast. Unlike the fifth, it had light grey circles honeycombed over a black surface, for an overall effect that looked like uniform dark grey until one got too close; and rather than impassively sliding through air, it spun in place, its speed and axis of rotation twisting seemingly at random. It gave off a sound like tremolo whistling, cycling through the four notes of a diminished seventh arpeggio.

"And here's a feed from when the army tried a preliminary bombardment. Reichner's started using completely automated weaponry," she added, with approval.

The video cut to the Angel crossing the north-west beach and a forest, before two MRLs opened fire on it; the rockets exploded harmlessly against sheets of orange light. A slit opened in one of the Angel's faces, revealing double rows of long, vicious teeth, and a great pink tongue, shaped like a human's but long like a frog's, shot out, crushing the MRLs. The tongue withdrew, and the mouth sealed shut and became a smooth, glossy façade again; throughout, the Angel maintained constant lateral velocity, while spinning randomly.

"I see," said Chitose. "So it'll be hard to get close enough to neutralise its AT Field."

"Hard, dangerous, and not worth trying," said Misato. "We're going to try the same tactic that worked against the fifth, hitting it with the positron cannon. Its centre of gravity follows a nearly-constant trajectory; assuming that's where the core is, and that it stays still while it tries to break through the Geofront armour, you should be able to kill it without getting anywhere near it."

Asuka tsked. She had accepted the necessity of fighting in a team awhile ago, but the lingering traces of her warrior code of honour resented attacking from longer range than they presumed the Angel could respond from.

"The Fourth Child is currently helping set it up," Ritsuko said, showing a satellite feed of Kaworu in the same position Shinji had been in a year ago, helping ground teams assemble the electronics, the cannon by his side.

"He'll take the shot, and a second, if he misses," Misato said. "Your job is to cover him until it recharges."

"Oh, please," said Asuka. "Why is he taking the shot? I'm the better pilot; he should be supporting me."

"Because he's already in position, and you're both equally good shots, or at least close enough that there's no real difference," Chitose explained.

Misato, who was better at working with stubborn and proud people, ignored this. "If it matters, fine. You take the shot. Kaworu?"

"Either or," he said, correctly divining her thoughts and not really caring who did what.

"And cut their synch rates to 30%," Misato added after a moment's thought. "If Angels can sense AT Fields, we don't want this one see you before you take it down."

"Kaworu-chan," said Chitose. "This is the first time we'll be in combat together."

"I feel safer than ever."

"Could that have anything to do with the eight kilometres of empty space between you and the city?" Asuka asked.

"That's certainly part of it," he said.

"We should use combined arms," Chitose said to Kaworu. "You like short swords, but those won't work here, so … you prefer needle guns to pallet rifles, right? I'll take the heat shield and a rifle, then."

"Wasn't that shield vaporised by the fifth?"

"This is a new one. I guess it makes sense to make a replacement, what with how many Angels have energy beam attacks."

Ritsuko, who could have added to that, chose not to. The pilots didn't need to know about Nerv's engineering priorities, and frankly it was a little annoying when they did.

The pilots bantered as the girls helped Kaworu put the finishing touches on the cannon, then crouched down in position. They didn't have long to wait before the Angel floated into sight, and over the city. It came to a halt over the same spot the fifth, thirteenth, and fifteenth had, directly over Lilith's chamber in Terminal Dogma, and stopped twisting, settling down to a gentle spin about a constant almost-vertical axis.

"This is it," Misato said. "Our sensors say this one is even stronger than the last two. I don't need to tell you what that means. We can't afford to give it any opportunity to damage you. Offence is always your best defence, but against this one, it's your _only_ defence. Your orders are to take it out with extreme prejudice and at all costs. Good luck."

"Japan is blacked out," Shigeru reported. "Charging cannon." The cannon was less experimental than last time; they'd got the charge time down to a fraction of what it had been.

The Angel opened its mouth again, and its tongue flicked out and against the pavement two hundred metres below, cracking it. It slammed down twice more, then swept across, throwing bits of loosened concrete and cars out of the way, before darting down again.

"It's in my crosshairs," Asuka said. Her frown was melting away, her old feral grin slowly returning.

"Charge at 95%," Maya read out. "Ready to fire in five … four … three … two –"

The Angel stabbed its tongue deep into the ground and drew it tight to slam itself downward, gouging a crater into the surface armour with a thud Misato felt from Central Dogma.

"Damn it!" Asuka cried, her finger twitching on her trigger, almost wasting her shot.

"Six armour layers broken!" Makoto reported, then, in an undertone, "Christ."

Misato made a mental note to have that one armour plate reinforced, after the battle. "Asuka, hold fire. Ritz, can you modify the targeting system?"

"You mean, can I do that before it breaks through?" Ritsuko asked, narrowing her eyes. "I … maybe. Maya, have Magi run AVP interpolation. It's moving too erratically for me to see any patterns."

Maya sent Magi the commands. The Angel bounced off the ground and rammed it twice more, before its tongue tore free; the Angel flew upward in a cloud of broken concrete and superalloy armour.

Without an anchor to pull against, its path was a mathematically perfect parabola. Asuka visually traced it, led the centre of mass, and pulled the trigger, all in the space of two seconds: a pencil-thin beam of pure antimatter shot out, dead on target, the light burning out the cameras and making the pilots shade their eyes.

"With extreme prejudice," she smirked. There hadn't been time to ask Misato's permission.

"Fifteen seconds until cameras are back online," Maya said.

Ritsuko nodded and looked down at her computer. Magi could calculate the positron beam's trajectory and compare it with the AVP's prediction of the Angel's position. "That's a direct hit. Good …" As she spoke, she happened to glance back at the haemochromatic feed. The blue pattern was still active. "Uh-oh."

The cameras blinked back on, showing an AT Field shimmering and fading out of sight, and the completely unharmed Angel behind it.

"Oh, _S__he__i__ße_," said Asuka.

The Angel spun in place so that one of its vertices was pointed directly at her. A second mouth opened with a wet squelching sound, showing more teeth.

"Misato?" Kaworu said, a hint of nerves audible.

Chitose, who had rested her pallet rifle on the ground, picked it up, and adjusted her grip on her shield. Her nearest thing to a nervous tic was that she stopped staring at passing clouds, but Maya saw her pulse rise to 165 bpm.

"Uncap their synch rates," Misato said, speaking very quickly. "Prepare for a second shot. Kaworu, Mogami, get ready for close combat; if it's at point-blank, you might be able to –"

The Angel's two tongues shot out and wrapped around sturdy-looking skyscrapers; the tongues went taut, slingshotting the Angel down between the buildings and tearing them out of their foundations. It ricocheted off the ground, throwing up bus-sized clumps of dirt and concrete, and flew toward the Evas fast enough to leave a plasma slipstream.

"Brace!"

Chitose dashed in front of Asuka and raised her shield, bringing her pallet rifle to bear; the Angel barrelled into her point-first with over a hundred kilotons of kinetic energy. The shield and gun took the brunt of it and were smashed to bits, but she still went flying; she hit an outcrop of rock, which collapsed onto her. Her frontal armour was ripped open; ichor sprayed from her stomach.

Kaworu raised his needle gun and got a shot off; the needle hit the Angel's AT Field and shattered. One tongue whipped forward and curled around him, pinioning his arms to his side and knocking his gun to the ground. He grunted: it was faster than he'd expected.

The second tongue went for Asuka; out of reflex, she blocked with the positron gun, and it wrapped around that instead and crushed it. She raised her arms to avoid getting caught like Kaworu, reaching into her pylon to draw her prog knife. The tongue dropped her gun and looped around her chest twice and then one thigh, saliva rolling off it. A wave of nausea swept through her from the sensation of the warm, wet meat wrapped around her body; she stabbed down to sever the tongue. The blade crashed against it without effect, throwing off orange sparks.

"What? No!" She brought it down again and again. The tongue lifted her up and toward the Angel's mouth; she braced herself against its gums. It took the opportunity to wrap another loop around her, its end slipping further down her thigh, trailing saliva. "Urgh! This – get off!" She brought a hand to her mouth and tried not to throw up.

The other tongue dragged Kaworu toward its mouth. "Chitose," he said, struggling futilely to free his arms, "whatever happens, don't –" He was helpless as it drew him in, and the teeth chomped down over the entry plug. Central Dogma went red, and sirens wailed, almost loud enough to drown out his scream.

"Pilot life signs critical! Synchronisation down! He's bleeding out!"

"_Oh. I__'m so sorry._"

"Hit the life support!"

"Already at its limits, and breaking down! It's too damaged!"

"Set the plugsuit to maximum compression about both thighs. Override all safeties, just get those arteries closed! Prepare the defibrillators!"

"_I shouldn't have waited."_

"Eject him!"

"We can't! The plug's shattered!"

"The Fourth Child's unconscious! Blood loss at one litre and rising!"

"_I know you don't want this, but you're not dying here__._"

"Asuka, give it everything you have!"

"I _am!_ This is revolting – I can't –"

"The Angel's still going!"

"Rei! Prepare to launch!"

"_Yui. __I love him__._"

"Rei?! She's no match for that thing!"

"We can't afford to lose all three combat Evas in one sortie. Rei! Your orders are to get its attention, then get the hell back to the Geofront!"

"_I know your true form. It's time to stop holding back._"

"Belay that order! Do not deploy the First Child. Initiate Unit-03's self-destruct."

"Commander!"

"Ibuki. Do it."

Maya mouthed a prayer for forgiveness, and moved to send the commands. As she did so, her gaze happened on the synchrographs, and she did a double-take. Asuka's rate was hovering in the low nineties. Kaworu's had dropped from 90.0% to 50.0% to zero when he passed out. Chitose's had slipped to 51.8%, then jumped to 91.4, then 149.9, then 241.4, and still going.

Unit-01 shoved the rockfall off itself, rolled to its feet, rushed toward Unit-03, and seized the tongue wrapped around it. It sank the fingers of both hands into the meat and tore it in half. The Angel spat out Unit-03 and Asuka and roared, gnashing its teeth, its cadence switching to an augmented chord, shaking the mountain; Chitose caught Unit-03 and backed away. Asuka landed beside her, spattered with saliva, and stumbled as the ground rocked beneath them.

"Take him to a hospital," Chitose said, her voice very slow and clear.

Asuka glanced from Unit-01, which was glittering with AT light, to Unit-03, which had been bitten almost in half.

"Good luck," was all she said. She took the ruined Eva and ran down the mountain.

Chitose pressed the severed tongue against her collapsed abdomen. Her armour, warped and torn by the Angel's impact, melted off; the tongue sank into the pale flesh beneath and filled it out, healing the damage.

"Cut her synch rate to 100%," Ritsuko said.

"Signal rejected!"

"Sorry, Doctor," said Chitose, "not today."

"Synch rate 261.2, levelling off," Maya reported.

"You'll die at that level," Ritsuko said.

"Not today," Chitose repeated, and killed the link.

Crackling with orange light, she stood against the Angel, as it ascended and opened its final two mouths, three and a half tongues snaking toward her, the wounded one quickly regenerating. Eva's eyes glowed orange.

"Here we go," she whispered.

Asuka may have objected to ranged warfare, but Chitose had never had any such compunctions. She swiped in the direction of the Angel; four deep gouges appeared in the Angel's surface, spattering LCL. The tongues lashed down toward her; she blocked two, but one wrapped around her legs, and one smacked into her from behind, smashing her power cable. Eva roared, shattering the armoured restraints around her mouth and one shoulder; she seized the tongue around her legs and bit it off.

More tongues wrapped around her arms. She dug her claws into one and shredded it; the other wrenched her off her feet and into its mouth. It chomped down on her; she kicked out at the same moment, dodging the teeth and knocking one out. She raised her free hand, and the tongue burst into LCL. She crawled into the mouth, scratching and biting at everything she could reach. The mouth snapped shut behind her; long-range microphones could hear muted wet tearing noises.

Central Dogma was silent for a minute.

"Holy hell," said Makoto. "Is she …?"

There was a crackle at Maya's station. "Can you hear me?" Chitose asked, her voice still slow and clear, with no video.

"Yes," said Misato, striding over. "Chitose, what –"

"Is the Angel still alive?"

Misato glanced at Ritsuko.

"It's dying," she said, reading the energy signatures. "You must have cracked its core, but –"

"'Dying' means not dead yet," Chitose said.

"High energy reaction detected!" Shigeru exclaimed. "Brace!"

The Angel erupted into a cruciform explosion, knocking out the cameras again. It took two minutes for the dust to clear enough to see even the silhouettes: the mountaintop had been blown clean off, the Angel had ceased to exist, and Unit-01 stood, undamaged but with most of its armour gone, orange light dancing around it like St Elmo's fire. Maya shook, and made the sign of the cross.

"Kaworu," Chitose continued. "Is he alive?"

"Life support shows vitals are positive," Ritsuko said. "Weak, but there. He's still alive."

"Is he getting the best treatment physically possible?"

"He's at a triage team. As soon as he's stabilised, we'll have him transferred to HQ's hospital. We're not going to let a pilot die, Mogami."

"Oh. Right. Of course not. Silly me."

With that, the AT light dimmed, her synch rate dropped back to the low eighties, her voice returned to normal, and video returned; she looked as bright and perky as ever. "Well, it doesn't look like there's anything left to do here. Shall I head back to Tokyo-3, then?"

"Mogami," said Misato, "what did you just do?"

"I killed the Angel." She began the walk back to the city.

"_Not that! __How did you absorb its tongue?__How did you make it explode like that? __H__ow did you get past two hundred percent synchronisation?!_"

"I don't know," she said, after enough hesitation to signal a lie.

Misato took three deep breaths. Calling her out on it wouldn't work.

"Okay, let's try something else, then. Why is Unit-01's battery not draining, even though you're not plugged in?"

Ritsuko glanced down in surprise. Misato was right; the battery was patiently hovering at full power.

"I assume it's drawing its power from the S2 engine instead," Chitose said, without the telltale pause.

"Impossible," said Ritsuko. "Evas' S2 engines are stunted; they only work when stimulated by an electric current. If we knew how to make them self-sustaining without needing a battery or cable, why would we bother with the power systems?"

"Well, I always assumed you did that for a technical reason, like maybe it's easier to power the robot parts with electricity than with super solenoidal energy. That, or you were worried that that would cause it to ascend to godhood and eradicate the human race. Or maybe a budget thing?"

Ritsuko brought up the diagnostics. In Evas, S2 engines usually looked like wrinkled, vestigial bladders. The one in Unit-01 now looked more like a human heart, swelling and contracting with Angelic energy.

"Mogami," she said, "why is Unit-01's S2 engine twelve times the size it was yesterday?"

"It probably grew."

"Mogami!"

"When my synch ratio spiked, that must have catalysed its Lilith part to use its Fruit of Knowledge to fix whatever parts of the S2 engine you got defective when you first made it. Probably Yui did that, figuring that that would be the best way to save him. I don't think it could happen with the production models; without Lilith, it would need a genius imprint and a massive synch ratio."

"What are you talking about?" said Asuka.

"We Lilin have the Fruit of Knowledge. It's a fancy mystical way of saying sapience. Lilith subtly directed evolution for a few billion years to make creatures capable of using it; you know, a heart and lungs and blood with haemoglobin to carry oxygen to feed a large brain, opposable thumbs, a voice box and ears to communicate with, that sort of thing. Even now, She's doing the same thing – I think it's called the Flynn Effect – or, She would be, if She weren't disabled by the Lance of Longinus."

"Wait, what?" said Misato.

"Overpressure the LCL," the Commander ordered.

Maya shot Misato another apologetic look and sent the command.

"It's a thing you use to disable a Seed of Life," Chitose continued. "I assume someone from Nerv took Adam's old Lance and used it on Lilith, probably to stop Her from looking for Adam. Anyway, Angels have the Fruit of Life instead of Knowledge, meaning the S2 engine; that's why they're physically so much stronger than humans, but they do stupid things, like attacking the most fortified city on Earth rather than destroying our industrial centres first. This is partly guesswork, by the way; the people who told me weren't very scientific, so I had to translate a lot of it from mysticism to fact."

"Who told you all that?" asked Asuka. "And who's Yui? The name sounds familiar."

"What are you doing?!" Ikari asked, as Maya hit the button repeatedly without effect.

Chitose opened a full broadcast channel to Central Dogma. "I pulled out a bunch of wiring earlier, when the plug went dark," she explained. "Dr Akagi was going to eject me, and then Shinji would have gone in, and this would have been a disaster, right? And then I only put the audio/video feeds back, because it also would have been a disaster if you'd decided to knock me out before the battle. Again."

"You're insane," said Ritsuko. "Those wires include life support functionality; if you were hit like Kaworu was, or if Unit-01 went fully berserk, you would have died."

"Wait, what? Really? Oh. Wow. Which of them are for life support? I'll put those ones back in."

Misato stared. She _had_ to be playing dumb. No-one could _possibly_ be stupid enough to pull random wires out of their Eva before a battle.

… _She pulled random wires out of her Eva before the battle, didn't she._

"This is intolerable," said the Commander. "Those plugs are set the way they are for a reason. If you can't accept them, we have no use for you as a pilot."

"What, you mean, other than killing Angels, literally the only use for _any _pilot?" Chitose snapped. "You know what a disaster would have happened if I hadn't been here. Besides, of the other four pilots, two are in intensive care now, you personally grounded a third, and the fourth can't win this war alone."

Misato quickly tapped out a text, the digital equivalent of whispering in Chitose's ear. _[He can't accept losing face here. Pick your battles and accept his authority.]_

"I will not be backchatted to or blackmailed by a _reserve_ pilot."

Chitose scanned Misato's message and frowned, puzzled. "How would that even be possible? Does she think I'm going to throw acid at him?"

Misato slapped a hand to her forehead.

Chitose shrugged haughtily. "Anyway. Asuka? If the name sounds familiar, Shinji must have mentioned her once. She was his mother, Ikari Yui. When he was very young, she underwent a destructive full-brain scan; the scan was imprinted into Unit-01's OS. An imprint helps the pilot synchronise, if they have a close connection, namely mother and child."

"What," Asuka said, very quietly.

"Mm-hmm. They're subtle and I don't think he knows about her, but I'm used to Unit-03, which doesn't have one, so I noticed right away."

There was a long pause.

"Mother?" Asuka whispered.

Maya caught Ritsuko's attention and pointed at the monitors. Chitose's synch ratio was hovering around 82.3%. Asuka's had plummeted from the nineties to 21.7%, then to 16.3 and 12.0. As they watched, it ticked down to 9.9%. A tone sounded, and a warning message flashed: SYNCH RATIO SUBCRITICAL: ABORTING. Unit-02 stopped dead.

"_L__et me out!_" Asuka's plug ejected and rocketed away from her Eva.

Chitose's eyes widened.

Asuka's plug's landing jets flared to slow her fall; it crashed through a copse of trees in the city limits, throwing up dirt and scraps of greenery. She fumbled with her hatch, scrambled out with a spurt of LCL, slipped on the plug's curved exterior, fell and twisted her ankle, and scrabbled as far away as she could, hyperventilating.

There was a pause.

"You absolute _idiot_," Misato said to Chitose.

Chitose stared, her mouth ajar, wondering what the hell she had just done.


	10. Ambriel

The Commander, Subcommander, Head of Operations, and Head of Engineering assembled in the Commander's office. An air of despair hung over them all.

"Katsuragi," Ikari began, bringing the meeting to order.

"Of the five Children, three are able to pilot, in a worst-case scenario," she said promptly. "However … they are the First, the Third, and the Fifth. The First can only synchronise with Unit-00, which is the weakest Eva. The Fifth –"

"Will not pilot," said the Commander, with no room for negotiation.

"– is suspended indefinitely," Misato said, nodding her agreement. Ritsuko pursed her lips. "The Third will be effective, especially with the upgrade to Unit-01, and I recommend him as lead pilot. However, both production models are sitting idle. We're significantly under-strength. We risk defeat from a blitz attack without reinforcements."

"I see," said the Commander. "And the other two Children?"

"The Second refuses to get anywhere near a plug. I have made no progress at all persuading her otherwise. I asked the Third to help, but he only did so half-heartedly and with extreme reluctance. I don't believe we can expect her to pilot again. If she ever does, I can't offer any sort of timetable, and have no reason to believe she will do so before the next or even final attack. The Fourth remains hospitalised. Doctor Venkatesh tells me his condition is incompatible with synchronisation."

"I see," he said again. "Akagi?"

"Repairs for Unit-03 are continuing; it should be usable in five days. Meanwhile, I've finished my investigation into the S2 engine. It's similar to the one we salvaged from the fourth Angel, but not the same. There are features missing, and some extra ones present; the functionality is similar, but the differences are more than cosmetic. I don't know where she got the blueprint she used, but it wasn't from that. I don't have enough data; I haven't been able to duplicate it in the other Evas, and honestly, I don't fully understand the one we do have. If you let Mogami try to repeat –"

"No."

"Sir, we could make huge strides in super solenoid theory, it –"

"This is not open to discussion, Doctor. If you don't have enough data to pursue this line of research, then close it and continue with your other projects. Understood?"

"… Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Both women turned and left, their heels clacking on the dimly-lit floor.

"I should have given her to Seele when they asked," Ikari said heavily.

"We _would_ have lost that battle, without her," Fuyutsuki pointed out.

"In the face of extinction, the old men would have given us whatever let her do what she did. Now, the Second is useless. Between the Fourth's injuries and the need to protect Rei, we have only one usable pilot left. I should have Section Two escort the Fifth to the airport now. If we can't risk letting her back into a plug, what use does she have?"

"If Shinji is incapacitated again, she'll be our only defence," Fuyutsuki said. "Is there any harm in letting her stay? She knows she's on her last chance; she's not going to violate nondisclosure again."

"I still don't understand why you and Akagi like her so much," Ikari said.

"Because she annoys the old men even more than she annoys you."

"Debatable."

…

A new day dawned on Tokyo-3. The trams bore commuters to their work or study; shops opened; and the pounding of construction picked up. After Nerv's announcement that only four Angels remained, and given how little collateral damage the last two had caused, new people were moving into the city to take advantage of its special economic status and bottomless UN subsidies. Nerv had neglected to announce that two thirds of its pilot roster was unavailable.

Maya had felt dizzy and nauseated that morning. She wore a surgical mask; the other commuters on her tram gave her a respectful berth, but not so much as to be insulting. It was flu, not leprosy, after all.

Shigeru made his way over. "Morning, Maya. Are you sick?"

"Just a cold," she said, thickly.

"You're literally swaying in your seat," he said.

She sat up as straight as she could. "It's fine." He touched her forehead with the back of his hand; she swatted him away, with visibly poor reflexes and coordination. "I said it's fine!"

"Right." Shigeru took out his phone. "Dr Akagi? Yes, it's me. Maya's feeling sick today –"

"No I'm not!"

"– probably just flu, but it looks nasty, and her temperature's up."

"Ask her what four hundred and fifty-five plus two hundred and ninety-nine is," Ritsuko asked.

Maya glared at him. "It's, uh, a six, carry, four, carry, and … what were they again?" He repeated both numbers. "Six and four and four. With carries. Seven hundred and fifty-four."

Ritsuko nodded. That was much slower than usual. "Remember that time, after the fourth Angel?"

"Yes, Doctor," Shigeru said. She'd caught a norovirus and came to work anyway for fear of letting Ritsuko down; in spite of her surgical mask, it had caused a minor epidemic and wasted most of the week for the entire bridge crew. "I really do."

"Tell her to take the day off, direct order, and if she infects anyone I'm putting her in maintenance for the next fortnight. And stop by the infirmary and pick up a mask for yourself, too. That girl is ridiculously infectious."

…

Kensuke looked around. No-one wanted to say it aloud, but everyone realised it. Things were falling apart.

The most obvious point was Kaworu, who hadn't been seen since the big battle. None of the pilots would talk and there was no leaked footage online, but Nerv hadn't been able to cover up the fact that a mountain was half the size it had been. Rumour had it that either Kaworu or the Angel had self-destructed and killed the other, or that there had been some sort of experimental weapon malfunction that blew them both up. Kensuke didn't believe any of this, because Shinji had seemed surprised by the suggestions and had explicitly said that Kaworu was still alive, but it was obvious that something had gone wrong. He had used the word 'alive' rather than 'fine'.

The second point was Asuka. She had taken most of a week off, and when she came back, she wasn't wearing her A-10 headband. She seemed smaller than before, and it was more than the few centimetres it lost her, or how strands of hair kept falling forward and hiding her face; her posture was slumped, and she would listlessly shoo people away rather than declare herself the centre of attention. She sat alone, or with Hikari or Shinji, who had finally returned, and she'd stopped browbeating him; but after class, when he would sometimes take a tram down into the Geofront for a synch test or an exercise, she would go the other way and head straight home. The most popular rumour about her was that Unit-02 had been destroyed in the same explosion that had killed or injured Kaworu.

Shinji was short on breath and tired easily, but supposedly that would go away with exercise. He had spent most of his time with Asuka, usually in silence; when Kensuke had approached him, he'd only said, "She needs me more right now," and apologised. Kensuke had still got a decent read on Shinji's mood. It seemed like he was still fundamentally depressed, and was trying to show a brave face for her. Kensuke was worried; the last time that had happened, it had taken very little to make him snap and give up altogether.

Rei skipped school most days, and was visibly distracted when she did show up. Kensuke had the distinct impression that she usually only missed school because of Nerv business, but now she was skipping because she just didn't feel like it. Someone had mentioned that her roommate was behaving erratically too, but he had the sense not to pry into that. Right now, Rei was staring out the window, before glancing at Asuka, the ceiling, and the window again.

Even Hikari was deflated. She had seen a little more of Nerv than he and Toji had, but she was rule-abiding enough not to give any clues at all about it. Perhaps it was just Asuka's mood rubbing off on her.

At least Toji still seemed normal, except that he too kept wandering off after school, giving vague excuses. Somehow, everything was falling apart.

…

"Hello?"

"Schätzchen."

"You're mad at me."

"A little. You know we weren't supposed to copy the S2 design onto Eva."

"That was Seele's rule."

"Yes, and I follow their rules."

"You're not telling me that _that's_ the worst rule of theirs I've broken."

"You did it because of me. After I told you not to."

"You would have died."

"I know."

"Why did you let it bite you? If you'd used your powers, you could have escaped."

"That's something you never understood. My survival isn't my only priority."

"Of course not, but it must be your top one. Whatever else you want, you can't have it if you're dead."

"For someone who hates being told what you should do, you're sounding awfully like doing the exact same thing."

"I'm not doing that! I'm saying that … hmm. Oh."

"I want to do my duty, and I want to protect things that should be saved. I want to protect them for them, not because I want them for myself while I live. So it's possible even if I die. According to the Scenario, it's probably _only_ possible if I die. It's definitely not possible if Unit-01 wakes up, or if Nerv guesses what Seele is doing."

"Pretty words, but they don't change the fact that you'd be dead, and I don't want that."

"We always knew that eventually we'd find a point on which we could fundamentally never agree. Are you going to kill me now?"

"What? I'm the one who wants you to survive. In fact, I want you to get better. Why don't you just regenerate?"

"Partly because that would be a dead giveaway that I have inhuman powers, partly because my S2 organ isn't large enough to make up for such a large mass defect, as you well know. But you needn't worry about me; an alternative has been found."

"Kaworu … love … I know I messed up. Everyone hates me now. And they're right to. But you, can't you of all people forgive me?"

"We want different things. I can't blame you for acting the way you do."

"Thank you. I don't – oh, I've got to go. That's the school bell. I'll talk to you later, though."

She hung up. A few minutes later, the students began filing out of the school. Shinji was with Asuka, Rei several paces behind. The first two did double-takes on seeing Chitose; she hadn't been anywhere near school since the one day, and never at the new location.

"Hi," she said, uncomfortably. "I'm glad you're feeling better," she said to Shinji.

"Uh, thanks," he said, rubbing his chest. It had taken months of regenerative therapy, but Dr Venkatesh had finally declared that he had done all he could, and that Shinji would fully recover with fresh air and exercise; any further treatment would be counteracted by atrophy. Venkatesh had since spent his time caring for Kaworu, who, in Shinji's opinion, definitely needed it.

"Are you alright about, you know …" she asked.

Asuka harrumphed and began walking; the others followed, a pace behind.

Shinji breathed twice before answering. "It's … nice to know that she's been watching over me," he said. "It's a lot to think about. But not in a bad way. Not for me."

"I'm sorry I said it the way I did. I just …"

He looked away. "It's done."

She took this at face value. "Asuka, what about –"

"Why don't you just come out and say it?" Asuka snapped.

"Say what?"

"That Nerv told you to try to get me to come back. I'm _not interested_."

"Oh. Because they didn't tell me that, I suppose. They mostly just told me to stay out of the way; they're not happy with me now. I thought Major Katsuragi would have asked you herself? I mean, that'd be a lot easier, since she sees you every day."

"I'm not talking to her," said Asuka.

"Oh. Well, I actually wanted to apologise for saying what I did after the battle. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it. I didn't think it would affect you like this. It was the Commander, he … he reminds me of some other people I used to know and hate. I really hate it when people tell me what to do, like he tried to, and … I'm really, really –"

Asuka stopped short. "Third," she said, without turning her gaze from Chitose. "First. Beat it."

Shinji took Rei's hand and pulled her ahead. Asuka waited until they were out of earshot and pitched her voice low; the streets were empty enough in the early Thursday afternoon to count as privacy, especially given the ever-present crickets and construction working against any hypothetical eavesdroppers.

"Never," she said, "ever, _ever_, apologise to me for telling the truth."

"."

"I'm not angry at you, even though you're an idiot, because at least you haven't been lying to me for the past ten years about it. Right?"

"Right. Seele never told me how Nerv got its pilots to synchronise," Chitose said. "I only figured it out when I got into Unit-01."

"You've mentioned Seele before. What is it, anyway?"

"Another organisation. They control most of Nerv's other branches, and they do other things, like getting funding and helping politically, I think. Kaworu is with them; I used to be, too, but I, um, quit, just before I came here. Asuka, I'm not sorry because I told you the truth. I'm sorry because it hurt you. I didn't realise that would happen. I don't understand."

"You really want to know?"

"Well … don't I always?"

Asuka, who had been hoping the other girl would drop it, huffed, and turned and started walking again. Chitose kept pace.

"A few months before I joined you and Smarmy at the Berlin base, my mother snapped. She started thinking I was a doll. And then she hanged herself. And the doll."

"."

"So now, I find out that I've spent the past year fighting Angels under the care of the person who tried to murder me and who only failed because she was too crazy to finish me off, and I can _feel_ her whenever I'm in the plug, and she's all around me, whispering in my ear, and _I can't remember what she's been saying_. Tell me, would that worry you at all?"

"Yes."

"That's maybe a _third_ of it. I'd forgotten all about what happened with my mother. Can you believe that? I buried it so deep that I actually forgot it, just so I could cope. Now it's all come flooding back up at once. I flinch every time I open a door. Not those flimsy paper ones the locals think are doors, real ones with wood and hinges, that's the last thing I saw before … And as if all _that_ wasn't enough, I also get to deal with the fact that Misato, Kaji, Akagi, everyone has been lying about the fact that they _shoved my insane dead mother into my Eva_, to manipulate me into piloting it for them. So. Yeah. It hurt me."

Chitose considered this. "That is … significantly more than I thought I could help with."

"Right. Because little Asuka-chan can't do anything by herself."

"I didn't mean that! But I said the thing that affected you so strongly, so I thought maybe I could say something else and get an opposite effect."

Asuka snorted. "Don't flatter yourself. It wasn't you telling me anything, it was me learning the truth. But you can't change the past."

They walked in silence for a while.

"So," Chitose said at length, "is this it, for you and Nerv?"

"I'm never going back," said Asuka. "You can have Unit-02, for all I care. If you don't mind exorcising the insane murder/suicide ghost from it. And why would you? You can pilot just fine without it."

"I can't, Asuka."

"Why not? You used Unit-01 just fine."

"Because I'm grounded. Apparently 'losing face' is an idiom in Japanese."

"Well – duh. How did you not know that?"

Chitose shrugged. "If you're mad with Misato, why are you still living with her?"

"Because Shinji begged me to stay. And she thinks I'm going to come crawling back and keep piloting for her." She snorted again. "Besides, it's nice having Shinji back. He can cook. Makes a change from that instant crap Misato kept throwing on."

"But what about the Angels?"

"What about them? You have four pilots and four Evas; you don't need me anyway. Shinji's fine now, and you somehow gave Unit-01 that physically impossible upgrade. Nerv is stronger than ever. Speaking of which, could you have done that upgrade this entire time?"

"Yes. So could Kaworu, if he'd been in Unit-01. We didn't for two reasons." She counted on her fingers, upward in the Western style. "One, if Unit-01 goes berserk now, it'll be unstoppably strong, and we can't just pull its cord and wait it out. I might have made a horrible mistake. And two, because now Nerv knows I know how to do it. Dr Akagi is going to make a lot of very accurate guesses about things that Seele and I would both rather Nerv didn't know. Still, it couldn't be helped; it was that or lose."

"How did you do it, anyway? That explanation you gave at the battle wasn't the complete truth."

"Well … please don't repeat this, but you know how Seele told me a lot before I got here? One thing I know from back then is the schematics for a fully-functional S2 organ. I don't know all the theory and it's not the right size for an Eva, but I could use my neural link to show it to Yui. She was a brilliant researcher; she adapted it for Unit-01. It was the imprint that did most of the work."

"Why are you the one telling me all this? Why do you know so much and I don't?"

"Seele has the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are a sort of instruction manual for the Angels. They know everything, and they like having a monopoly on the truth, so they only told people who needed to know, and forbade them from telling anyone else. That's the only reason Nerv is a secret organisation, and one of the reasons why I hate those NDAs; they're for Seele's benefit, not humankind's. Kaworu, Dr Akagi, and the Commander and Subcommander all know a lot too, but they all answer to Seele. The Major and Kaji have been investigating, but they're behind me. I'm the only one who knows and doesn't care what Seele thinks."

Asuka's heart ached dully, but only for a moment. Kaji had tried to get her to pilot again, a few days earlier; she'd screamed something about betrayal and threw a shoe, and he left. Aside from that, she'd barely thought about him in what felt like months. On one level, she missed him, but on another, she sort of didn't care. Ever since she'd moved in with Misato, he hadn't been there for her; he had his own problems, and had left her to hers.

"Why did they need you to know?"

"They want to defeat the Angels in a very specific way, so that Nerv isn't too powerful afterwards. To get it just right, I had to have a few tricks up my sleeve, like the upgrade, and the synch rate spike. Although I don't think they ever really trusted me. I ask too many questions."

"You think?"

"They meant to use Kaworu, not me. He probably knows things about the Angels that I don't, and I think they spent more time making sure he knew social etiquette than for me. I was always more wilful, and they're really quite sexist." She stretched, arching her back. "Asuka, you know just now, when you said we didn't need you, and that Nerv was stronger than ever?"

"What about it? You are, aren't you?"

"I did mean that apology honestly, and no-one else put me up to this, but no. We're not actually doing so well. The Commander still won't let me or Rei deploy, and … did you not hear about Kaworu?"

"What about him? Shinji hasn't said anything. I know he was hurt, but he survived; he can still pilot."

"No, he can't. Well, technically he can, but his legs were both bitten off at the knee. He can still synchronise, but his nerves have remapped themselves, and he can't make Eva walk any more. I suppose he could act as a sort of AT-shielded gun turret, but other than that, Shinji's on his own. He barely beat the last one of those yellow critters; did he tell you, there was another one yesterday? They're almost completely armoured now."

Asuka blinked, then set her brow again. "The Commander's a dick, but he's not suicidal. He'll let you and the Honours Student fight. She'll be fine if she has a real Eva. Copy that upgrade to either production model and have her synch with that."

"I can't. Yui had help from Unit-01's high Lilith component. I couldn't do it for the others. Besides, they'd go berserk if Rei tried to synch with them."

"How do you know so much about that? She's never tried, and even Akagi can't tell when Eva will go berserk."

"Well, it's obvious in this case, don't you think? A Lilithian Naphil can't synch with an Adamite Eva; that's like mixing oil and water, isn't it?" She didn't know a Japanese equivalent for 'Naphil', so she used the Hebrew, jarringly, since Hebrew and Japanese phonics sound nothing alike.

"I swear to God, say 'it's obvious' _one more time_ about something biblical-sounding which no-one has ever told me but which they absolutely should have, and I will not be held responsible for my actions. What's a Naphil?"

"Someone whose DNA was spliced with genes from a Seed when they were an embryo. Rei can synch with Unit-00, and Kaworu told me that it doesn't have maternal imprinting, so she must be using the Nephilim hack." She again used the Hebrew pronunciation and plural, juxtaposed against Japanese grammar, and then abruptly switched to German; Seele had mostly used German when talking about Nephilim, so she associated it with the subject. "That's where the Eva itself acts as a sort of mother; it can do that if it shares genes with the pilot. Unit-00 is mostly Lilithian, so Rei must be too."

"They were injecting genes from the thing that caused Second Impact into human embryos?" Asuka asked, also switching to German, which she preferred. "Why would anyone ever do that?"

"It was part of a suite of experiments leading up to the Human Instrumentality Project, which is this huge top-secret project Seele's doing. Can you especially not tell anyone I told you any of this? This is exactly the sort of thing the Commander's likely to permanently ban me for talking about, and I don't want to watch Third Impact from the sidelines."

"Fine. How do you know Ayanami's a Naphil?"

"Partly because I can't think how else she could be synchronising, if she's not using the imprint method. And partly because of her colouring. Seed genes mess with people's pigmentation. It's for a technical biological reason, something to do with how genes express themselves; I don't know enough genetics yet to understand."

"Smarmy's hair and eyes are also weird, does that mean he –?"

"Yes. He's Adamite, though, so he can synch with the production models, but not Unit-00. Unit-01 would be hard, but he could manage. Can you even more especially not tell anyone about that? I'm worried that Nerv might … um, react badly. The Major in particular, and the Commander."

"My wing– my _ex_-wingman is part Angel. Why not. What about you? You're not albino, but if those are the only two ways, and you're not Shinji's sister, and you used Unit-01 …"

Chitose suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. "Uh. I actually … I'm a special case."

"You can say that again."

"Can we please not talk about it? I promise I'll tell you after the Angels are all dead."

Asuka frowned, but didn't press; Chitose had already told her much more than she was allowed to. "If Smarmy couldn't synch with Unit-00 and they knew that, why did they even try?"

"Kaworu told me he went along with it because he didn't want to admit that he understood the tech; Seele and Nerv are on bad terms. Dr Akagi especially hates Seele. I think she hoped it would get him killed, or maybe she thought it would make Seele look bad for taking so long to send Unit-03 here? I can't hold it against her, though; I mean, it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to criticise someone for wanting to kill someone working for Seele. Besides, I don't think she's tried to kill him since then, so I'm letting bygones be bygones."

"Wait, back up. Why exactly would that be hypocrisy?"

"Because when I quit, I killed a bunch of their soldiers and some other staff who were in the way. Can you also not tell anyone about that?"

"You," Asuka said. "You, a fifty-kilo girl, killed soldiers, plural, without an Eva."

"I weigh fifty-two kilos."

"And I was having so much fun believing you, too."

"Oh! You thought I meant I killed them one at a time; no, only a few, and then I blew up most of the base at once. There were some N2 mines in the base's armoury; I set them off, and they blew the entire mountain apart. The other way would have taken far too long."

Asuka gave her a look. "You're kind of terrifying, you know that? You don't have a sense of humour and don't do sarcasm, and that's the exact same tone you'd use to say that you'd run out of tea."

…

Maya really was feeling terrible. She had tried to do some work on her laptop, but her head had started spinning and she'd had to lie down for a few hours. Then the nausea had returned. Her balance shot, she dragged herself to her feet and over to the bathroom. It was occupied. She considered waiting and even, briefly, forcing her way in, but her inner voice of reason quickly persuaded her to visit the kitchen. She shuffled to it and barely managed to throw up in the sink.

Her housemate Ami wandered in, yawning, her hair uncombed. "Hey, Maya. Yeesh, you look terrible."

"Thanks." She rinsed her mouth out, feeling sorry for herself.

"I'm going out with some friends tonight. I'll be back late. Don't wait up."

"Sure," said Maya, who knew that Ami's idea of 'late' ranged between eleven pm and five in the morning. Ami wandered out into the hall. Maya put on the kettle for some tea, thinking it might clear her head, and Ami came back in a few seconds later. "How are you doing that?"

Maya blinked. "What, dying?"

"No, being in the bathroom at the same time. Like, a recording?"

"I don't …"

She suddenly remembered her doppelgänger. She'd pushed it to the back of her mind after it had done nothing but sit in her wardrobe for the past six months, and she hadn't developed any other signs of craziness; she'd accepted it as being an inexplicable fact of life.

"You heard me in there," she said, setting the heat to minimum and following Ami into the hall. Ami knocked.

"I'm Maya!"

"You see?" said Ami. "I didn't think you did pranks? Is it, like, your phone and some sort of pressure switch thing?"

"You heard that," said Maya, pitching her voice low.

"Um. Yeah? Not like it was quiet."

"So she's not in my head. She actually exists."

"Maya?"

"Ami." She began backing away. "I think we should both step away from the door, very, very –"

…

There was a rumble, and the ground shook. Asuka's and Chitose's heads whipped around to stare, as a plume of dust rose into the air. A moment later, a hundred metres ahead, Shinji and Rei checked their phones.

"Angel," Chitose said, switching to Japanese, which she mentally associated with attacks.

Both girls took a moment to remember the last time the early warnings hadn't gone off.

"We're really not on the roster any more," Asuka noted.

"I still need to go," Chitose said, internally cursing the Commander for snubbing her by not sending her a notification; if she had been in a shop, she might not have known about the attack until the sirens went off. "Will you come with me?"

"I already said no, didn't I?" Asuka said, conflicted and deeply unhappy. "I can't make Unit-02 move anyway." And she turned to head toward the nearest shelter.

Chitose ran toward Shinji and Rei; her long legs got her there at the same moment a Section Two van pulled up and opened its doors.

"Get in," said the driver. He tapped his earpiece once Shinji threw the door shut. "Pilots secure. You're clear." He floored it, and the Angel alarm went off.

Rei sat beside Shinji. She opened her mouth to speak; he gave her a questioning look; she shut it again. He turned to Chitose.

"Are you allowed to be here?" he asked, pitching his voice so that the agents wouldn't overhear.

"No," she said.

"You won't be allowed to launch."

"What else am I going to do?" she asked. "It's my fault you're already down a pilot. I'm not going to hide in a shelter and lose you another. The Commander will let me do it if the battle goes badly." _Which it __totally __will_, she almost added.

Shinji blinked. After the Fourth Angel, when he'd made a mistake and been scolded, he'd abandoned his responsibilities and run away from everything. That thought apparently hadn't even occurred to her. On the other hand, it had never occurred to him to deliberately lash out at his father when they had disagreed, and he hadn't broken anything, or anyone. Still, he didn't have it in him to hate her.

"Can you call the Major?" she asked him; Rei had been giving her a cold shoulder since the last Angel. "I want to know how the Angel got into the city so fast, but I don't think she'll talk to me."

"Right." He fished his phone out and rang the Central Dogma line. "Misato? Is the Angel already inside the city?"

"We don't know anything about it," Misato replied. "We can't even find it, but we know it's moving. Our haemochromatographic cameras are going in and out. It looks like sabotage."

"I thought Angels weren't smart enough for that?"

"I didn't say the Angel did it. It wouldn't be the first time a human had sabotaged us. Or it might not be an Angel at all; that was an AT explosion, but it was small, and Ritz thinks a human with a modified S2 engine could have made it. Stay frosty."

"Okay," he said, a moment before the van turned into a fireball.

…

The three pilots lay in a heap, surrounded by the twisted, scorched wreckage of the van and Section Two men. Chitose, who had the most experience with explosions outside an Eva, was only stunned for a moment. She took Rei's and Shinji's pulses, then crawled over to the driver, searched him, and found his gun, a SIG Sauer. She weighed it in her hand and checked the clip: eight bullets, one of them chambered. It was just like the Eva-scale versions, or rather the Eva-scale versions were just like it.

Rei blinked, pushed herself upright, and took Shinji's pulse. "Mogami?"

"These vans are armoured. I think that this sort of thing is why. May I borrow your phone?"

"Shinji is hurt," Rei said, handing it over without a thought.

Chitose took the phone and deliberated for a moment. "Stay with him and give him first aid; call HQ with his phone and get him in when you can. I'll go ahead and do what I can."

"Why do you have a gun?" Rei asked, as a sidearm was about thirteen orders of magnitude too weak to penetrate an AT Field.

"Leverage," said Chitose, and ran off. She wouldn't need it to kill any technicians she met, but she would need it to threaten them.

She was only a block from the nearest trans-Geofront depot; she got there a minute later, just in time to see the tram leave the station.

"… and it's going to get to Nerv before I do," she realised. She raised Rei's phone to her ear. "Major?"

"Mogami? Rei filled us in. Where are you?"

"At the station. Can you stop the Geofront tram, right now? I think the Angel is on it."

"The security cameras are going haywire. None of our systems is working properly. How sure are you?"

At that moment, the call was disconnected.

"Someone's trying a remote hack," Ritsuko said, typing rapid-fire. "They're using my own back doors. I don't know how, I only ever told – it'll take me time to regain control of anything."

Misato glared at the phone. "Can you stop the tram?" Even if Chitose was wrong – which was likely – there wasn't any point in getting whoever was on board to HQ before the pilots. A second Section Two van was headed their way to help, and they would need to transfer to one of the trams presently.

"Yes." She sent the command and resumed what she was doing. "I never bothered putting back doors for that; there's nothing to stop a Magi override."

"Good. Now, scan it for a blue pattern."

"The scanners are locked. It'll take me a moment to override them," said Ritsuko, but she didn't get a moment, because the tram blew up.

Chitose, who had been looking around the station, glanced down at it. The tracks had been snapped by the explosion, and bits of tram rained down into the Geofront. She saw a human figure in a Nerv uniform falling out, and a glitter of orange light. The figure twisted in mid-air and locked eyes with her for a moment; the hair on the back of her neck stood up.

"Naphil," she breathed, and skipped away from the edge, breaking eye contact. She had broken out in a cold sweat, and her heart hammered in her chest. Nerv wasn't equipped to deal with Seele's trump card. "I don't want to die. I don't want to die."

She knew she didn't have a choice. Whatever the Naphil was planning, it was certain that she couldn't afford to let it succeed. It was also certain that she wouldn't be able to get permission to launch, even if she told the Commander everything about Nephilim: he'd never believe her in time. This wouldn't bother her so much if the Evas weren't physically locked down. She shivered, but slowed her breathing and calmed down enough to function.

She called Kaworu. His room was a Faraday cage, and Seele had apparently disabled the regular telco network, but her phone had permission to use Seele's private and secret relay, which used high-frequency channels that could get through the Faraday cage; both parties had reasoned that it couldn't hurt to leave one line of parley open for her. "Kaworu, what's going on?"

"Er – is anything?" He hadn't heard the alerts from his insulated ward.

"A Naphil just blew up something on the surface, tried to kill me, and she's flying down the Geofront right now."

She spoke with the phone pressed to one shoulder while she looked around the station. After the fifteenth Angel, Misato had had BASE parachutes stocked in the Geofront depots, so that a pilot could descend even if the rail was destroyed again. Chitose found the locker after a few moments, glanced around, saw a security camera, and shot the locker open.

"I wasn't told anything about this," said Kaworu, frowning.

"Then Seele doesn't want you to know. She must be going to assassinate you."

"What? Schätzchen, that doesn't make any sense."

Dr Venkatesh had spent the past week attaching cloned legs to his pelvis, and had had ample opportunity to poison him, or just nick an artery, or make any of a thousand subtle mistakes which would cause an autoimmune reaction and immediate and deniable death. She interrupted him before he could explain this.

"Get to the cages and squish her. I'll buy you some time."

"Very well," he said, and hung up. "Gyandev, is this Naphil coming a Seele plot to kill me?"

"There's a Naphil coming?!" He put his post-op equipment away and booted up his laptop; it automatically connected to a hacked feed from Melchior. _Blue pattern in __Geofront_. "Well, if it's come to kill you, it's probably happy to kill me too. You're the only protection I have right now, so I think I'll stay behind you for now."

"Disable the cameras," Kaworu said, swinging his new legs out of bed. They were numb and clumsy, but at least they weren't going to fall off again, probably. "If it isn't with Seele, even more reason to destroy it." Dressed only in his hospital gown, he headed out to fight.

Outside the ward, he could hear alarms ringing, and the bark of gunfire. The alarms kept stuttering on and off; something was interfering. Staff ran past him, trying to assemble at battle positions, but blast doors kept closing and cutting them off. Kaworu ignored them all and headed toward the cages. A minute later, at the end of the hospital section, he ran into Maya's doppelgänger.

She was in her Nerv uniform, holding a smoking Minebea PM-9, and surrounded by dead Section Two agents; most had been shot, but several had been reduced to nothing but LCL, bones, and uniforms. Kaworu had only a split second to absorb all this, before he was overcome by Absolute Terror. His eyes glowed red, and light glittered around him.

"_Die!_" both shouted at the same time.

Doppelmaya raised her gun to fire; at the same time, Tabris glared, and the stream of bullets bounced off an orange octagon. Doppelmaya gestured, and a panel tore itself off the wall and slammed into him from the side. He staggered, snarled, and glared at her; orange light shivered between them, as their AT Fields clashed. Hers was stronger. It overwhelmed him and blasted him off his feet, sending him skittering down the hallway. She ran after, reloading.

He rolled to his feet and waved; a door flew off its hinges and rolled itself into a club. An orderly ran out, stared in shock at the Nephilim and flashes of orange light, before Doppelmaya hit him with a disintegration blast. Tabris took the opening and dashed forward, bringing his door around in an uppercut. Doppelmaya blocked with one hand; Tabris, who had had extensive martial arts training and had only wanted to close for mêlée, dropped the club and seized her gun arm, twisting it around in a pin. She wrenched free, snapping her own elbow, and drove an AT-enhanced foot into his chest, punting him into a wall hard enough to crack the plaster; he fell to the ground and slumped forward. She swapped her gun into her good hand and levelled it.

"Leave him alone!"

With that, Chitose ran up from behind and clubbed her in the head with a Section Two femur. Her AT Field still down from Kaworu's attack, the bone connected hard enough to snap in half; she staggered. Chitose didn't give her time to recover, following through with a flurry of elbows to the back of the neck and knees to the kidney, where she knew Nephilim's S2 organs were. She snatched Doppelmaya's pistol and swept out her legs, moving forward to stand over and execute her; Doppelmaya, however, spun around in mid-air without falling. Chitose hesitated for a moment before firing; it was enough time for Doppelmaya to shove the gun away, so it only blasted her leg apart, and then she punched Chitose in the gut.

Unlike Tabris, Chitose didn't have a full-power AT Field protecting her; even from a broken arm and with Maya's physique, the AT-enhanced punch curled her up and tossed her down the hallway, losing the machine pistol, bouncing against tiles, and crashing hard into the far wall, twenty metres away. She coughed up a mouthful of blood, then rolled to one side behind an alcove, barely avoiding a burst of gunfire. Doppelmaya held out her injured arm; there was a squelch, and it mended itself. She looked down at her ruined leg stump, and a blast of AT energy to her back sent her tumbling.

"_Don't touch her!_" Tabris roared. Tiles broke free of the floor and ceiling and swarmed Doppelmaya; she glared at them, blasting them to dust, and Tabris tackled her. They rolled in mid-air; she got on top and body-slammed him. She was heavier and stronger, and got two good punches in, which he half-deflected, before he hit her bad leg and rolled her off.

Chitose breathed as deeply as she could and winced, then pulled up her shirt to look. Her stomach was already deep purple. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This Naphil was stronger than ought to be possible, given the amount of space a human body could spare for an S2 organ. She shouldn't have been able to shrug off those blows; she'd ignored what Chitose had been sure would be incapacitating damage, or at least pain. And she looked like the bridge tech, who was too old to have been born a Naphil. Whatever was going on, this wasn't a winning fight. She'd have to take a risk.

Tabris kicked Doppelmaya in the face, clumsy from his newly reattached nerves; she grabbed his leg and threw him into a light tube. He smashed into it and bounced against the floor amidst a shower of broken glass. She spun on her one leg, sensing as Chitose stepped out of her alcove, pistol drawn, and shot out a Bakelite valve directly overhead; pressurised red-orange fluid sprayed into Doppelmaya's face, knocking her off her foot. She recovered and waved at the valve, sealing it; a moment later, Chitose jump-kicked her in the head. Doppelmaya tried to block with her AT Field, but Chitose was too close to fully seal away; she screamed and tried to retaliate with denaturing blasts, but Chitose dodged around them and kept attacking with haymakers and leg sweeps, then pressed her gun against Doppelmaya's chin and emptied her clip, spattering her brains across the ceiling.

Undeterred by the large hole in the top of her head, Doppelmaya seized Chitose's lapels. The air around her hand glowed and hummed, and the pilot was blown backward, through a ward door and a long shelf of glass tubes, shattering them and leaving a smear of blood along the wall. Doppelmaya glanced over her shoulder, at Tabris, who was struggling to his feet, and blasted him back into a load-bearing wall; it collapsed, dropping two floors onto him and completely burying him. Then she returned to Chitose, who was fumbling on the ground, trying to push herself back to her feet. She was too weak, and only managed to smudge blood all over the floor.

In Central Dogma, Ritsuko entered a final command, and the camera feeds and security systems came back to life. She smirked, and spoke into the PA.

"Get away from her, you _bitch_."

With that, she opened the Bakelite valves throughout the corridor, and they disgorged a flood of the sticky fluid; it swept Doppelmaya off her feet and into a wall. The Bakelite swirled over her and hardened.

This held for about two seconds, before Doppelmaya broke out, spraying crystalline shards, flying above the Bakelite. She moved toward Chitose's room, then slowed, and turned and vectored out of the infirmary, leaving her and Tabris alive.

"Shall I flood the rest of the base with Bakelite?" Ritsuko asked, cutting the flow to the infirmary. She watched the Angel float down a corridor away from the cages; the stump of its ruined leg slowly elongated, regrowing, and its head refilled, although wrongly, into what might have been a wax figurine of Maya after lying atop a warm stove for an hour.

"No," Misato ruled. "That'll slow our response down more than her." She spoke into the PA again. "Mogami, can you hear me?"

"Turn off Bakelite," the girl wheezed. She was propped up on her elbows; the red plastic was rapidly hardening around her legs, waist, forearms, and hair. Blood ran down her forehead, from scratches along one cheek, from her mouth, and from glass punctures all across her back, arms, and legs. "Drown me, Kaworu. Think concussion, this time."

"How on Earth are you not dead?" Ritsuko asked, localising the PA to the infirmary.

Chitose tried and failed to pull free of the Bakelite, and coughed up more blood.

"Kaworu isn't in his room," Shigeru reported. "I can't see him; he could be in the collapsed area."

"What the hell was he doing –" Misato began, before catching herself and reprioritising. "Organise a team to dig that up as soon as the Angel's dead, and get a med team for her. Mogami, hang in there. Rei, Shinji, hurry!"

"So Angels can be intelligent," Ritsuko said coldly. "I assume it's been piggybacking off Maya's knowledge. If her brain's been destroyed, it should revert to typical Angelic intelligence, so …" She hit some buttons, and the entire security system lit up. "It's heading for the Terminal Dogma access shaft."

"Seal the bulkheads again," Misato ordered. "Purge the system, in case she left an override."

The two Evas shoved their restraints off. The pilots were still in their school uniforms; Unit-00 had been stripped down for servicing and was missing the armour over its legs.

The last bulkhead blew open and the Angel entered the shaft for Terminal Dogma. "Hurry!"

"On it!" Shinji replied. He raced Rei down the main corridor, through a door Ritsuko opened for them, and dived into the shaft, after Doppelmaya. "Wait, what the hell is this?"

"It's not human!" Misato said. She assumed it was and had somehow possessed the real Maya, but Shinji didn't need to know that, and there was no way to save Maya after so much damage. "It's trying to trick you. Kill it!"

Ordinarily, he would have argued with this, but the Angel no longer looked particularly human. With its brain destroyed, it couldn't regenerate correctly, and it had somehow shifted into the uncanny valley, shaped almost like a human but not quite; the regenerated leg was too long, the head shaped like a pumpkin. Misato's words were underscored as the Angel threw an AT blast at Unit-00; Shinji jumped in the way, and with the Angel's small size, it barely pitted his armour. Rei dodged around him and swiped at it, clashing with its AT Field; Shinji joined her and they overwhelmed it, and crushed the Angel against the wall of the shaft. It burst apart into LCL.

"Target is silent," Makoto read out. "It's gone."

Misato glanced at Ritsuko, to see how she was taking the loss of Maya. Her face was hard, giving nothing away.

"Fuyutsuki," said the Commander, standing to leave. "Finish up here."

Inside Kaworu's room, Dr Venkatesh switched off the hacked camera feed, set down his medical equipment, and straightened. Nerv had clearly dealt with the Angel. Ordinarily, as a professional, he would prefer to stay and fix whatever Tabris just broke, but with only one more Angel remaining, he suspected he had already outstayed his welcome. He opened the door and climbed out onto the Bakelite.

Subtly, without giving off telltale energy signatures that would alert Nerv's sensors, Kaworu shifted enough debris off himself to breathe and to restore circulation. His news legs throbbed with pain. The fallen roof had blocked the Bakelite from smothering him, and disrupted his AT rage. Presumably, the Angel had panicked on sensing Unit-01's activation, raced for Lilith, and not made it.

He shut his eyes and meditated on the battle. It was obviously a full Angel, given how it had so easily overpowered him. Probably its entire chest cavity was an S2 organ; his was taken up with niceties like lungs. Apparently the Angels had decided to take a leaf out of humankind's book: humans had copied their Fruit of Life, so an Angel had copied the Fruit of Knowledge.

He was more interested in how well Chitose had done. With the cameras down, he'd been able to use his powers all-out; she obviously hadn't had that luxury, and yet she'd managed to deal what would have been lethal damage if she'd realised its weak point wasn't in its head. They'd had the same combat training, but it had gone straight out of his head when Absolute Terror set in. She must have been preparing herself psychologically, planning tactics, and training in secret for months to be that cool under fire. Therefore, she'd expected all along to have to fight a Naphil.

Seele had always insisted he would be able to defeat her when the time came for their ultimate confrontation, had done so so often that he'd started to believe them, but suddenly he wasn't so sure. She'd been hurt worse than him this time, but if he knew one thing about her, it was that what didn't kill her made her stronger, and now she'd had an opportunity to field-test her anti-Naphil tactics.

Five holograms lit up around him, the only source of light in the dark. Kihl spoke first.

"Tabris. You disappoint me."

Kaworu shut his eyes. "I am sorry. I underestimated the power of a full Angel."

"Not that! We were explicit with our designs. The rebel must die."

"Ah. Then you wish that I had disengaged and waited for the Angel to finish Chitose off?"

"Why did you not? She is an obstacle to the Scenario."

"She saved my life from the seventeenth …" Kaworu took a moment to recalibrate. Seele counted the ten point fifth Angel as the eleventh, had ever since Kaji told them about it, and so their index was one higher than Nerv's. Of course, that still made them too high, as neither Adam nor Lilith were true Angels. "The eighteenth Angel. It would have been dishonourable not to return the favour."

"You care more about honour than Godhood?"

"That was my choice. The debt is paid; you needn't worry about a repeat."

"I do not trust you, Tabris! You are blinded by your feelings. You call her by the name she took for herself, even to us."

Kaworu mentally cursed but maintained outward calm. "And that was her choice."

"You are rationalising deviation from the Scenario!"

"I will continue to play my part in it."

"Then do so. The nineteenth Angel is dead."

"But not the thirteenth."

"Irrelevant. It is accounted for, and she will not be required for its defeat."

"The time to execute the rebel is now," said the man in red.

Chitose had guessed from the start that Seele would eventually order him to kill her. She hardly would have fought the Angel if she planned to kill him anyway, never mind initiating a deification event against the last, but she wouldn't have trained to fight Nephilim if she wouldn't prefer to kill him than die. As for Kaworu, he didn't particularly want either of them to die, but it was still his duty to obey Seele.

"Will this not impede the defeat of the thirteenth?" he asked, playing for time.

"That battle is already all but won," said Red.

"Kill the rebel, Tabris," said Blue.

He lay under the pile of rubble and was silent.

"Tabris," Kihl growled.

"No," said Kaworu. "I cannot."

"You _will_ not let your heart override your purpose!"

"Not my heart. My head." He jerked his new legs clumsily. It felt like the Angel had torn a muscle in one. "I am still weak. I would not stand a chance against her, as we both are now."

"She is more wounded than you," said Yellow.

"Only superficially. It will take me longer to return to peak condition. My defeat here proves it."

There was a pause, as the Human Instrumentality Committee deliberated.

"You have two weeks," said Kihl. "After that, no more delays, and no more excuses. The rebel must die."

"As you wish," Kaworu said, wondering if it was true, and the holograms vanished.

…

A long way below him, in Adam's vault, Venkatesh opened his laptop and sent an email to a remote Seele server, attaching the data of a month's experiments on Kaworu's S2 organ and fresh Adamite cells. While it was sending, he took Petri dishes of cloned cells and packed them neatly into his briefcase until it was full. He checked the laptop. The email had bounced. He frowned and sent it again.

He whirled at the sound of footsteps. It was Ikari Gendo.

"Having problems with Nerv's firewall?" he asked. "We had it upgraded recently, you see."

"This is outrageous," said Venkatesh. "My sponsors paid for that research. You have no right to keep it from them."

"Yes. It's the final piece of the puzzle for Seele, isn't it? The key to Human Instrumentality. With that data, the only thing left for their plans is the defeat of two more Angels, isn't it? Given they control the last one."

"Please," said Venkatesh. If Ikari wanted to keep pretending that the ten point fifth had never come, that was his business, but everyone knew that the only Angel not accounted for was whatever kept making the yellow-and-grey ones. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to catch."

"I wanted to tell you. Your work on my son was satisfactory."

And with that, Ikari drew his gun and shot him through the eye.

He put the gun away and went over to the work bench. He put on a pair of latex gloves, took a forceps, and extracted the bullet. Next, he took a syringe, filled it with cells from one of Venkatesh's Petri dishes, and injected it into his arm. He took a second syringe of Adam and injected it into the bullet wound. He took another two gloves and filled one with LCL from a vat, like a balloon; he held it over Venkatesh's head and pricked it with a scalpel, creating an LCL spatter effect. He then washed the forceps with methylated spirits, put it back in its place, and put the bullet, second syringe, dish, and gloves into a tupperware container. He moved over to Venkatesh's laptop and edited the email.

_Seele,_

_I found Dr Venkatesh in Adam's chamber. Note the syringe and injection hole in his arm; the former contains traces of Adamite cells. I can only conclude that he attempted to implement Human Instrumentality on himself, and that he was unsuccessful. His home drive contains two sets of data, one in a folder labelled 'Instrumentality Research', the other labelled 'Real Instrumentality Research', the latter of which is heavily encrypted and which I have attached. He has been sending falsified data. We must treat it all as suspect and repeat the experiments; it has passed independent verification before, but we now know that his methods contain at least one fatal omission._

_This is not a setback for the Scenario, only a delay._

_Ikari Gendo_

He created the Real Instrumentality Research folder, copied and pasted the original folder into it, ran an encryption program with a password of 300 characters of randomly mashed keys, and edited the files' timestamps. He turned back to Venkatesh.

The Fruits of Life and Knowledge were designed never to mix, and it had taken Gehirn many failures to overcome the safeguards to create Rei and the Evas. Without the cocktail of drugs required to suppress their natural antipathy, they reacted poorly. Because the Fruit of Life was stronger in the short term, it usually won. By now, LCL was bubbling up out of where Venkatesh's brain used to be; it looked exactly like the pressure had built up until it had exploded. The bullet was of a small enough calibre not to have made an exit wound; he'd made sure to bring a .22 today.

Ikari sent a code from his phone to disable Magi's firewall for five minutes. He took a dozen photos of Venkatesh from different angles, plugged his phone into the laptop, uploaded them to the email, and sent it. He then downloaded the Instrumentality data, unplugged his phone, took the tupperware container, and left for the incinerator upstairs.

…

A long way above him, Ritsuko took a call.

"Maya?! You mean you weren't – Yes, we know, it's dead. Between the fact that it looked like you, that the first explosion was centred on your home, and the fact you didn't call, I assumed it had possessed you. Why didn't you call earlier? Well, tell the emergency teams to work faster next time. There wasn't all _that_ much rubble."

Several kilometres away, Maya sniffled; an ERT worker had just pulled Ami's body from the wreckage of their home.

"And when you get back here, we're going to have a long talk about how an Angel was able to hide near you for long enough to somehow learn your appearance, the layout of Nerv, and how to remotely override my security. Yes, well – stop crying – I said stop crying – the next time you think you're going crazy, tell me about it. Direct order. You're no more helpful here if you're insane than if you're dying of norovirus. And I … do care about you, Maya." She slammed down the receiver. "Smooth, Akagi. Smooth."

A moderate way above and to the side of Central Dogma, Shinji came out of his shower. He dressed in his school uniform, left the change room, and ran into Rei.

"Ayanami," he greeted with a smile.

"Ikari," she returned.

"… Was there more?" he asked.

"I," she said, looking at her feet and blushing. There was a long silence. "Class Representative Horaki said that there would be a festival in two weeks."

"The hanami," Shinji said, nodding. "I haven't gone to one of those since Mother died."

Rei swallowed. She had spent the past three months steeling herself for this one moment.

"I wish to go."

Shinji blinked.

"With – with me?"

"I am sorry," Rei said, turning to leave.

"No – I mean, wait! Ayanami. If you want to go, then let's go."

Rei nodded, blushed harder, smiled, and walked away.


	11. Lailah

Second Impact was mostly so devastating because of its immediate impacts, by way of tsunamis, seismic shocks, and sea level rises, and human responses to them, such as the refugee and resource wars, but it had also had serious documented long-term effects. One was that Antarctica was still largely devoid of life, being flooded with poisonous levels of Adamite LCL. Another was that Earth's orbit had significantly shifted; the equator had tilted and Earth's orbit had become elliptical and moved closer to the sun, with a shorter year of slightly over 364 days. Because most of the Antarctic ice had been vaporised, not only was the sea level higher, but the world had become much more humid. This had upset ecosystems the world over, exacerbating food and especially water crises.

Japan had become a land of eternal summer, which had confused its seasonal plants and wildlife for years. More recently, though, its trees had resumed their traditional rhythm of blossoming. After the barren post-Impact years, hanami had taken on an extra-special meaning, especially for the older generation, showing that not even a global cataclysm could stop life on Earth for long.

"I don't know about this," Shinji said nervously, picking at his yukata. "I look stupid."

"You look adorable," said Misato, who had been looking for an excuse to play dress-up with her charges again ever since the seventh Angel.

"Couldn't I just stick with Western formal? Tie and suit?"

"It's a tradition, Shinji. She'll be expecting a yukata."

Asuka strolled into the doorway, sipping from a juice box. "She'll be expecting you to not be wearing pink, idiot. We're not even going to the gay pride march."

"It's a _flower festival,_" said Misato.

"You say tomayto, I say togayto."

"I can't believe you've lived here for a year and you still don't appreciate Japanese culture."

"And I can't believe how much you appreciate Oktoberfest when you've never even seen Germany."

Misato, who happened to have a Yebisu in hand, set it down and scowled. "_For your information,_ Shinji is going, and if you want to sit around here all night moping, that's your problem."

"Are you stupid?" Asuka asked Shinji. "It takes more than a few minutes for a girl to get dressed for something like that. I don't even have clothes, and don't ask me to wear _hers._"

"Yeah, you'd need a _way_ bigger push-up for that," said Misato, still sore about the beer crack.

Asuka glared. "And a _belt._"

Seeing things beginning to deteriorate yet again, Shinji spoke up. "Um, Asuka? I kind of said I'd go with Ayanami."

There was a gentle pop, as Asuka's juice box burst in her fist and spattered across the floor. Shinji made to fetch the mop, but Asuka didn't move aside to let him pass, and one look at her face told him that she wasn't taking it any better than he'd feared.

"_What._"

"She asked –" said Misato.

"_Shut up._"

"It was, um, right after the last battle," Shinji said. Asuka, her expression now quite terrifying, began stalking toward him, like a hunting tiger; he circled around her to keep away, and his speech accelerated. "She came and asked me and, um, she wanted to so I said yes."

"_You promised you would spend tonight with __ME_."

"What? N-no I didn't! When did I do that?"

She affected a high-pitched girly tone. "Oh Asuka-chan, no I'm not going to that stupid old festival! I'm so sorry, Horaki-sama, maybe next year!"

"I didn't –" It had never occurred to him that she would interpret that as a promise, although he'd had a gut feeling that she'd go off at him for one reason or another. "It wasn't like that! And I _did_ promise Ayanami. I mean, you could come too, we could all –"

She slapped him, putting her hips into it; the sheer venom knocked him off his feet. "_Idiot_. If I wanted the Honours Student's cast-offs, you'd be the very last thing I took." She turned and swept out, then went into her room and slammed the door.

Misato gave Shinji an apologetic look and a hand up. He shook for a moment, then threw his SDAT at his futon. It bounced off and scuffed the wall.

"I don't get her," he hissed. "We spend _every_ night together, we barely ever go out or do anything, we just watch TV, she doesn't even let me spend time with Kaworu, and the one time, the _one time_ I decide to do something I want, _and_ which someone else wants, she hits me for it. What does she expect me to do?"

Misato, who could have given an accurate answer, just shook her head. Then she picked up her beer and took a sip.

"And do I have to wear pink?!"

"It's all I have in your size!"

…

Rei and Chitose helped one another adjust their kimonos. Given their egregious fashion senses, the results were middling. Once they had done the best they could, Chitose fetched her phone.

"Kaworu? I know I should have asked earlier, but are you going to the festival?"

Kaworu, who was himself dressed up in elegant black velvet, blinked, seeing a brief mental image of Tokyo-3 reduced to a smoking crater. "If you wanted a date, you really should have asked in advance."

She chuckled. "Not a date, I just want to know whether you'll be there or not. I want to see what it's like. I mean, I suppose that a date might be nice, and I guess that'll be an option for next year, and I should like to because dating sounds interesting – there was one boy from school who had some strong opinions about it – but right now I just want to see what the festival is like."

"I'm sorry, but I have bad news."

"Oh." She put a pout into her voice. "But Kaworu, you know how much I like this sort of thing. Couldn't I owe you a favour? We should do more favours for each other."

He'd actually thought they agreed that he appreciated events like this much more than she did. She'd tried to get into culture to have something more to talk about with him, but it hadn't really stuck. "I meant, I have a prior arrangement."

"You … what. Kaworu. Who's with you?" Her voice slowed and deepened.

"What exactly is your relation to her, anyway?" Hikari asked Kaworu, remembering what he'd said about Chitose being permanently surrounded by crises.

He mouthed 'not now' to her. "Schätzchen, I like her, and I like spending time with her. It doesn't change anything about us, but I have my own life, just like you do."

Hikari frowned.

"You didn't answer my question, Kaworu."

"Yes, because I don't want you to get mad at her."

"I don't get mad."

"The last time you got mad, you hit an Angel in the face with a human thighbone."

Hikari opened her mouth, but caught herself. There was no way she hadn't misheard that.

"I wasn't mad. That was perfectly rational. It was the best weapon I had to hand."

"Missing the point, Schatz."

"You fought her too. Unarmed."

"Yes, other than my Angelic powers. I'd asked Seele to disable the CCTV so I could use them without being seen. I didn't run in with no protection whatsoever and then get the tar beaten out of me."

"You're exaggerating."

He chose not to respond to this. "The second-last time you got mad, you literally destroyed a mountain."

"Are you talking metaphorically?" Hikari asked. Kaworu mouthed 'don't let her hear your voice'; Hikari couldn't lip-read, but got the gist.

"I still wasn't mad. I was _upset_ because that Angel had just torn you in half and you were bleeding to death."

"Thank you again for that, by the way, but the _third_-last time you got _upset_, you destroyed _another_ mountain, this time without using an Eva, and this one containing rather a lot of people."

"I'd been stuck there for seven years. I had pent-up frustration."

"My point is that yes, you don't often get violent, but when you do, the results tend to be drastic."

"Fine," Chitose said. "Fine. You can have the damn festival."

"Schatz, please don't –"

She hung up.

Hikari gave him a look. "If it's not too rude to ask … why are you friends with someone like her? She seems to cause a lot of trouble."

"She was my first friend," he said. "After Berlin, when Asuka left, she was the only person my age I knew. And she really isn't a bad person. Besides, she's been under a lot of stress since she arrived in Tokyo-3, and especially since Asuka quit. She tries not to show it, but I'm worried about her."

Hikari wasn't happy that he was so concerned about another girl, but she had to smile anyway. Times like this reminded her why she liked him so much. He really wasn't just a pretty face.

…

Rei gave Chitose a look.

Chitose set her jaw. "Well, festival or no festival, I'm going to experience something new tonight," she said, and they set out.

Shinji was waiting for them downstairs; when he saw them, he waved, and Misato, who had dropped him off, drove away.

"Ayanami, Mogami," he said, then, directed toward the former, "You look really pretty."

This was true. When Rei had gone shopping, she'd had no idea what to get, but an assistant had helpfully recommended a deep blue kimono that went well with her hair. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't even great by the standards of girls who put hours into their appearances, but her natural beauty plus the fact that for once she wasn't wearing her uniform made it look quite magical on her. Like her plugsuit, it showed off the lines of her body, and that she was remarkably well-developed for a girl her age; unlike that and her school uniform, it gave her an air of sophistication and culture, and made her look a few years older.

She normally cut her own hair, but had never put much effort into working out how to make it look nice, so it was usually ragged. For tonight, she had – after much soul-searching – asked her roommate to even it out for her. Chitose, who had briefly experimented with a few hairstyles before deciding to just leave hers unbound, managed a serviceable pixie cut, and even offered to dye it; Rei declined this.

Chitose, for her part, was still splotchy with bruises from the last Angel. As usual, she had ignored the assistant and picked out a kimono that she liked the look of without consideration for how it would look while she was wearing it; the yellow clashed with her eyes and made the unbruised parts of her body look washed-out. Like most tall, skinny girls, she'd had the choice between horribly loose and obscenely short; she had gone for short, and made up the difference with _zettai ryoiki_ stockings. Luckily, she hadn't thought to try makeup.

Still, at some point her pubescent gawkiness had begun maturing into long-limbed elegance. Even with her injuries, she moved gracefully. Her eyes sparkled as she drank in every sight, and she'd finally learnt how to cut out her split ends properly, so her hair was long and flawless.

"Thank you!" she beamed, misinterpreting his meaning. "So do you!"

Shinji frowned. She kept calling him pretty, but never handsome.

"I didn't know you were out of the hospital yet. Misato said that that last Angel …"

"It looked worse than it was."

"She said that it punched you. Angels can destroy battleships by punching them."

"This one wasn't so strong. My ribs are taped, but other than that I was pretty much fine after they tweezed the glass out and gave me some therapeutic massages to help with the bruises. But what about you, what happened to your cheek?" she asked; it was still pink.

"Nothing."

"Did Asuka lose her temper because you're taking Rei?"

"No," he said stubbornly.

"Really? Then why did she slap you?"

"Can we please just drop it and go?"

Chitose shrugged and turned. Over her shoulder, she said, "I'm not actually going to the festival. Promise you'll tell me about it after!" and flounced off down the road.

"Then where is she going, dressed up like that?" Shinji asked Rei, who said nothing. "I guess she's just like that. Shall we go?"

She nodded, and they set off. They didn't hold hands or speak, but still it felt peaceful, in a way that it never did with Asuka, not even before the fifteenth Angel, when her moods starting growing ever more unpredictable. There were crowds in the street, for once; the city had shut down most public transport for the night and put up blocks against cars to allow pedestrians freer access.

Neither of them had ever had much appreciation for just how many people lived in Tokyo-3. Piloting Eva to save the city and the world had always been an abstraction; a thing that gave Shinji worth, or that the Commander ordered. Here, it was emphasised that even in these few square kilometres, there were something like a million people, every one of whom owed their lives to the four Evas.

Neither of them really liked that. They preferred simplicity, and the quiet of their own existence.

The trees, though, were nice. They lined long boulevards west of the central business district; most of the time they were wilted, barely surviving, but after a cool stretch, they had finally blossomed, and now the desolate rows of brown turned to pink of new flowers. White fairy lights were draped across the trees, giving it an eerie radiance.

People had set up stalls along the lane; mostly sweetmeat vendors sending tantalising aromas wafting through the streets, but also handicrafts, clothes, paintings, street games, and assorted bits and pieces. Some sold what they claimed were parts of vanquished Angels, although the pilots couldn't identify which Angel could have dropped the nacreous shell nor the vial of black ichor, and they rather doubted Section Two would allow such a breach of quarantine. Musicians played a mix of traditional, Western classical, and modern pop music.

After a while, the anonymity of a crowd set in, and the pilots relaxed. It wasn't as though they would meet anyone they knew in such a large crowd.

"Shinji!" said Hikari, walking up with Kaworu in tow. "Ayanami! I didn't know you two were an item. Wow, how long?"

"Er," said Shinji. "We just … how did you find us?"

"Are you serious? Ayanami's the only person on Earth whose hair is naturally blue. We spotted you a mile way."

"Oh. Right."

He scanned her outfit. It was also pink, a lighter tone than his, with a lilac pattern, and very well tailored. She'd put her usual pigtails into a short French braid, which made her look older and more mature in the same way Rei's outfit did. Together with Kaworu, who could look stylish wearing a garbage bag, the overall effect was very classy.

"Is Asuka okay with this?" she asked, of him being with Rei. "If you hurt her …"

"I wouldn't say that that was what happened," said Kaworu; by now, Shinji's cheek was close to its normal colour, but Kaworu had good eyes.

"And, um, congratulations," Shinji said. "I didn't know you were going out either."

Hikari blushed prettily. Shinji mentally reclassified her from 'classy' to 'cute'.

"We started while you were at a synch test," said Kaworu. Ritsuko had largely given up scheduling them for him, since he'd kept his ratio at 90 flat for months, having decided that any higher would entail too much risk of sympathetic injury for too little gain in effectiveness. He was more cautious ever since the seventeenth Angel. "She asked me by IM while I was recuperating. Would you mind not telling Chitose?"

"Um, okay. Why not?"

Kaworu looked pointedly at Shinji's sore cheek.

Shinji got the hint. "Right. So, uh. I didn't realise you were so close."

Kaworu glanced at Hikari. "We've shared a lot. We find each other interesting."

"Well, you are a pilot, and everything else," said Hikari. "Do they …" Kaworu gave a nigh-imperceptible shake of his head. "I mean, should we stick together for a bit? You know, like a double date?"

"Er," said Shinji. He glanced to Rei, who said nothing. "Okay?"

The four of them made their way through the crowds, stopping to buy fairy floss, and to listen to the last third of a rendition of Tchaikovsky's piano trio in A minor, which Shinji had once tried to play with Kaworu and Asuka but which had been well beyond them. They dawdled by a karaoke stand which Kaworu wanted to visit, but the other three swiftly vetoed this, before Hikari asked to try goldfish scooping.

…

Asuka lay on a chair, her eyes not really focused. She'd supposedly been watching TV for the past hour, but she couldn't have said what had been on. She occasionally changed the channel randomly, more to give her hand something to do than because she expected it would change anything.

"So that's it, then," she said aloud. "I've lost."

She got up, went to the fridge, cracked open one of Misato's Yebisus, and took a pull. Then she made a face and poured it down the sink, and went back to not watching TV.

More or less involuntarily, she went over the tally again. Over the past few weeks, a backup pilot had not merely broken but utterly crushed her synch rate record, seemingly as an afterthought, as though she could have done it any time she'd wanted, and hadn't only to spare Asuka's feelings. A few minutes later, she'd lost her ability to pilot altogether. She hadn't received any love letters from the boys at school since then; she wouldn't have reciprocated, obviously, but it was impossible not to wonder why they had all at once stopped being attracted to her. And tonight, the one boy who she had thought she could count on had decided he'd rather have a walking mannequin than her. Even her boozehound guardian had run off with the man she used to have a crush on, until she'd realised he was just as self-absorbed as any other adult.

Being the best pilot had been a central part of her self-identity; it had been how she'd proved to the world that she existed as a person, that she wasn't just some worthless pile of bones and flesh. Losing that had hurt, but she'd had enough scraps left to keep herself together. She was the smartest, the prettiest, and everyone loved her. Except, not really. Her grades in school were still lacklustre; she'd never put in the effort to understand kanji. The boys had forgotten about her. Even her faithful Shinji. Even Hikari was too busy mooning over Smarmy to worry about her best friend. Without any of that, she wasn't sure who she was.

"What's even the point?" she asked the TV.

…

"Shinji," Hikari asked quietly, when they were close enough to speak without either of their dates hearing. "I was wondering what things are like between you pilots."

He thought. "Haven't you asked Kaworu or Asuka already?"

She shrugged. Neither of them was impartial enough for the question she had in mind.

"Well. I like Kaworu. We've kept up our duets, you know; do you play anything?" Hikari shook her head. "He's really good. He's been trying to teach me a piece called _Quatre Mains_."

"Have you seen any of his paintings?" she asked. She deftly scooped another goldfish. She was the most experienced, having been scooping for years.

"He paints?"

"Yes. He's very good, although he doesn't think so. He used to throw his canvases out when he was finished; I made him keep them, or give them to me. I have quite a few by now."

"Huh," said Shinji, surprised to learn about this side of Kaworu that he'd never hinted at before. He tried to snatch a fish, and his poi broke. He looked over at the subject of their conversation. Kaworu had never tried scooping before, but he was naturally graceful enough to be almost as good as Hikari. Rei was watching from a few paces back; he said something to her, to which she didn't reply.

"How about him and the other pilots? He doesn't talk about them much."

"I don't think he gets along very well with the girls. I never see him with any of them."

"None of them?" she pressed.

"Rei isn't paying much attention to him," Shinji pointed out; she was looking at him instead. He flashed her a smile; she blushed, which made him blush in turn.

"Aside from her?"

"Well … we're physically together during synch tests, obviously. Asuka doesn't like him. He calls Chitose a lot, and I know they go out some nights, but he's never asked her along with us. I … I think he feels awkward around her?"

Hikari wondered whether that was because they didn't get on as well as they pretended to, or because they got on even better. "Do you know where they go? Like, to date things, or …?"

Shinji shrugged. "I wouldn't know. But he's here with you right now, isn't he? She didn't even come to the festival."

Suddenly, Hikari felt a lot better. "Yeah. Thanks, Shinji."

They finished up, waved Kaworu and Rei back over, and walked toward a mask stall.

"Hey! Shinji!"

They turned and saw Toji approaching, a girl with a toothy smile under his arm.

"Hey, everyone. These are most of the Eva pilots, and the Class Rep. This is my girlfriend, Yuki."

"You have a girlfriend?" Shinji asked, surprised. "Does everyone?"

"We've been keeping it quiet," Toji said. "Do me a favour and don't tell anyone? Even Kensuke? Especially Kensuke?"

"You must be Ikari Shinji," said Yuki. "Grey hair is Nagisa Kaworu, blue is Ayanami Rei."

"And Horaki," Toji added. "Just be glad there's no red."

"You must have talked about us a lot," Shinji said to Toji.

"Not really," said Yuki. "Well, I mean, yeah, a bit, obviously, but you're the guys who pilot the robots that fight the things that keep trying to destroy the city. You're kind of famous."

"We are?"

"You didn't realise?" said Hikari. "How could you not be famous, with all that?"

"Right?" said Yuki. "I'd've thought you'd get random girls walking up and trying to swap undies for autographs all the time." Hikari turned pink.

"Maybe we would if ever we actually managed to stop the city being destroyed," said Kaworu, who had actually had that happen once, shortly after the fourteenth.

Shinji opened his mouth to protest, except that on second thoughts the previous four Angels had all at least damaged it, and the last had stopped blowing it up not because they defeated it but because it managed to bypass their security.

"You can't talk about it, can you?" Yuki asked. "Toji-chan said so. But there's still a lot of bootleg footage of the battles, you know, shopkeepers with CCTV that they upload to YouTube, that sort of thing. We were just watching the laser dick one a few nights ago; he told me what happened inside the robot. That was pretty hardcore."

"Er, thanks," said Shinji, who had tried to repress that particular nugget of trauma.

"Huh? Shinji?" came a familiar voice.

"Oh, crap," said Toji, shifting the arm he had around Yuki to her forearm so they could run. "Sorry we've gotta –"

At that moment, Kensuke pushed his way through the crowd and stopped short.

"Oh," he said. "Toji. And Yuki."

Hikari opened her mouth, then promptly shut it again.

"I guess this explains a lot."

"Wait," said Toji. "It's not what it looks like."

"It looks like you've been going out with the girl I liked for, what, six months, behind my back."

"Okay … yes, but it's not like that."

Yuki sighed and touched Toji's arm, couple-code for 'let me handle this'. "Kensuke, you're sweet, but we had no chemistry. We were never going to work out."

"Didn't keep you off my best friend, though."

"Hey, you don't get to tell me who I can date," she said, hackles rising. "I like him, he likes me. If you don't like it, tough. And don't you dare take it out on him, either. Your hurt feelings about not marrying the first girl you asked out don't mean you get to tell him who he can date, either."

"Hey, will you keep it down?" said a middle-aged man passing them. "Some of us are trying to enjoy the hanami."

Kensuke rolled his eyes and turned. "Whatever," he said over his shoulder, before pushing his way through the crowd.

He didn't care where he went, only that he was too angry to enjoy anything or want to be near anyone. In spite of his interests, he was too gentle to vent by kicking anything or even shouting. He made it down to where the fifth Angel had fallen; the area was central and had been repaired, except for one little fenced-off patch which the city council had kept as a memorial, with cracked concrete and slivers of broken glass. It matched his mood well.

"That had to suck," said a man, who came and sat next to him.

Kensuke glanced at him long enough to not recognise him, and went back to staring at the memorial, not saying anything and hoping the man would take the hint and leave.

"So, let me guess. You thought it would be worth at least checking out the hanami, see what we old people were so excited about, because it hasn't happened in your lifetime. What do you think?"

"It's stupid."

The man nodded. "Yeah, I never liked it either. Plants aren't really my thing."

"What are you doing here, then?"

"Eh. It's not about that. It's about going to a party, any excuse. Life sucks, but you have to make the best of it."

Kensuke said nothing.

"Not that that helps you at all. You have to have time to get angry and hate both of them before you can get over it. No point even thinking about that part of it yet."

"Why are you still talking to me?"

"I guess you remind me of myself, when I was your age. You're Aida Kensuke, right?"

"You know me?" Kensuke asked, interested in spite of himself.

"A bit. I'm a coworker of some of your classmates, if you know what I mean. I read your file. I liked a lot of the same things you do. Still do. And I sucked at talking to people. I was scrawny, couldn't play sports, the biggest otaku in school. Eventually I graduated and got a job where I … well, where I know some of your classmates pretty well. Being a teenager sucks, and there's not really anything you can do about it. But it's not forever."

"This isn't about being a teenager. This is about my best friend lying to me."

"One thing your file didn't say was why you two were friends. You don't seem to have much in common. Other than Shinji."

"It was like … you know when the teacher tells you to get into pairs? And you're the one left over?"

The man chuckled. "Thanks a lot. I spent the last fifteen years repressing that."

"We were left over. And he's not – he wasn't a bad guy. Not perfect, you know, but who is?"

"No-one I've ever met."

"They weren't even wrong, you know? She wasn't anything like me. The one time we did go out was boring. We would have broken up anyway. I mean, you can't date someone unless you like them at least a little bit, can you?"

"Sure. I mean, you can't hold out for a soul mate, either. They say that there's even odds your soul mate died in Second Impact. And I've only ever known one woman into the military," he added wistfully. "But you'll meet someone you have fun with, eventually. Maybe go for someone who likes other technology? It's good to date people who show you new things."

"Tsh. I thought I did. Then it turned out she was already _engaged_. At our age. To this other guy I know, too. Can you believe it?"

"I wish I couldn't. The good women are all already taken. There's this one girl I've liked for years, and she's just started going out with this guy she knew from college, a real scumbag. I never had a chance. You know, it's probably a good thing we left early. I hate seeing couples together at nights like this. Right?"

"They aren't there together," said Kensuke. "I know her boyfriend, and he was with a bunch of other people." He thought back to the scene: other than Toji and Yuki, there had been Kaworu, Shinji, Rei, and Hikari. He tried to work out how those four met. Maybe the pilots had all gone together, and Asuka and Chitose had run off somewhere, and then they'd run into Hikari?

"Oh. Guys' night out. I guess she's with some girlfriends, then?"

Kensuke shrugged irritably. "Maybe? How should I know?"

"Well, didn't you say you liked her?"

"But she's engaged."

"Yeah, but you can still hang out, can't you? You said you had fun together. And if the other guy isn't with her now, he can't be all that possessive."

"Yeah, but," said Kensuke.

"But, you were thinking of her as a girlfriend, so once that fell through, you stopped thinking about her at all?"

"… I was angry that she didn't tell me earlier," he said, defensive.

"I'm not criticising. It's your choice. And I probably would have done the same for mine, if I didn't have to see her every day at work. It's just that I do like her, and I know I'd be less happy if I never saw her again, even if seeing her hurts. That's part of what it means to be human." His phone chimed. "Well. Speak of the devil. I've got to go."

"Another attack?"

"Yeah. But not on us."

…

"Don't look."

"I have to."

"Don't."

"If I don't, the world will end."

"It'll be worth it."

"Give me my phone."

"No."

"Give it to me."

"That I can do."

She snatched the phone from his hand. "Damn. Damn, damn, double-damn."

"Angel?"

"If I say yes, will you tell Seele?"

"Do you think they won't find out anyway? And you know we'll need an in with them soon."

"Urgh."

"You know, they won't miss you for fifteen minutes."

"No … mm …"

…

Makoto walked onto the bridge, which only contained Shigeru.

"Nice," said Shigeru, of Makoto's dark grey yukata.

"I didn't take time to change. Where is everyone?"

"Maya's still on psych leave. I don't know where Doctor Akagi is; the Commander went off with her to do some experiment, but they should have been back hours ago, even without the alert. The Subcommander was here, but he wandered off … somewhere. And Major Katsuragi's not here yet. We'll get everything prepped and hope one of them shows up soon."

"Right." Makoto booted up his terminal. "What's the situation?"

"You know Akagi's robot submarines, in Antarctica? I was on duty for them tonight. One detected a blue blood pattern, just before it was destroyed. I set others to investigate. One by one, they were destroyed. One of them lasted just long enough to confirm it was azure."

"The mother of the yellow Angel critters," Makoto guessed.

"I'm thinking it was probably a critter, not the Angel itself. Those probes were equipped to detect AT Fields, and didn't, just the blood type. Probably the mother is near that point, and the latest critter is guarding her and took out the subs. Its Field hasn't yet matured, so it doesn't attack the Angel; just before it does, it'll head here."

"They're close to indestructible now, with all that armour," said Makoto, and queried Magi. "It says here that, going by past patterns, the next one should attack soon. We have maybe a few days before it arrives. What do we do?"

"Knowing the Major, I'm guessing we'll attack first," said Shigeru, leafing through UN military schematics. "The obvious thing would be a diving raid, like with the eighth, but off a ship. There's only one ship with the power infrastructure for an Eva that could make it there within a few hours. Asuka's old friend, the _Over the Rainbow_. They had it running recon for the critters, that's where we got forewarning from the last, remember?"

"We can't requisition it without Misato's orders," Makoto said. He tried to call her, but her phone rang without an answer. "She's not picking up. Do you think she's alright? This isn't like her."

"Tell Section Two. I'm going to try to figure out if we can deploy any pilots."

There was a long list of regulations, which had come from the Commander's office and which seemed entirely arbitrary to Shigeru, about how Evas could be used. Unit-00 wasn't allowed out of the Geofront; perhaps that was fair enough, as it was only a prototype, and wasn't fully compatible with third-generation infrastructure. Ever since the seventeenth Angel, Unit-01 wasn't allowed off Honshu; Fuyutsuki had said something vague about protecting critical assets, presumably meaning that it would be embarrassing if they lost their strongest Eva at the bottom of the ocean due to an equipment malfunction. That left the two production models. With Asuka unable/unwilling to pilot, that meant Kaworu or Chitose.

In his debriefing after the eighteenth Angel, Kaworu insisted that he heard an alarm and headed out to the cages; the Angel ambushed him en route and dropped the ceiling over him, miraculously not crushing him. When Chitose was interviewed, she pointed out that she was still banned from piloting, so she'd gone looking for Kaworu, and it had thrown her through a door. There was mysteriously no CCTV footage, but it had been obvious to an irritated Misato that both were telling half-truths, not least because they happened to be the only people who'd run into the Angel and survived. Still, Kaworu wasn't blacklisted, and Chitose was. Shigeru made the call.

Kaworu answered on the fourth ring. "Hello? I see. Yes, I'll – one moment, please." He checked his screen: a text had just arrived from a contact whose name was written '?'.

_[You must not pilot Eva.]_

"I'm afraid it's impossible," he said aloud. "I can't pilot now; I wouldn't be able to synchronise."

"What? But you had a test barely a week ago, and you got a synch rate of 90% again."

"Even so."

"Just come in, will you?"

"What was that about?" Makoto asked, putting his own phone down.

"The Fourth says he can't pilot."

"Did he say why?"

"Something about synchronisation, but he didn't go into details."

Makoto thought. "We still don't know how he can set his rate to 90 and leave it there. Maybe whatever he does to synch won't work right now?"

"What else are we going to do?"

"Ask for a spare."

They considered this, then, wordlessly, played a round of paper-scissors-rock. Shigeru lost, made a face, and tried a second call. Makoto set about prepping Unit-03.

Kaworu arrived a few minutes later, suited up, and made his way to Unit-03. Fuyutsuki showed up again, giving no explanation of where he'd been, and took command. Kaworu climbed into the plug and waited while they powered up the mecha.

"Eva is active," Shigeru reported.

"With a synchronisation score of zero point zero percent," Makoto read out.

"Is that possible?" Shigeru wondered. "I heard that even if you stick some random guy off the street in a plug, they could still get a few percent, just not enough to clear the absolute borderline."

"Are you even trying?" Fuyutsuki asked Kaworu, irritated.

"As hard as I can," Kaworu said blandly.

Fuyutsuki harrumphed. He could see where this was going. With Kaworu bowing out, that left them with exactly one option. He had a fairly good idea of what the outcome of the battle would be. Still, he wasn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. "Eject, and try in Unit-02."

"Sir?" Makoto said, surprised. "He's never been synchronised with any other Eva before."

"The Commander's standing orders are to defeat the Angels at all costs, and not to allow the Fifth Child to pilot," Fuyutsuki said. "We have no choice."

Kaworu climbed into Unit-02's plug. It smelt sterile, dead. Asuka hadn't been in it for three weeks. It screwed into Eva's back, and there was a burst of neural static.

"Oh," he murmured. He glanced at the cockpit microphone, and static obscured his words from Central Dogma. "Pleased to meet you, Kyoko. At home, I think. She's afraid of you. A mutual friend says she said you tried to murder her when you were still human." He listened for a while. "Aaah. That explains a lot. Yes. I promise I'll tell her, the next time I see her. Yes." He dropped the white noise. "How am I doing?" he asked Central Dogma.

"Zero," said Misato, appearing in his HUD.

"Major Katsuragi," Kaworu said. "I was wondering where you were."

Kaji was behind Misato, looking smug. "She dropped her phone behind the fridge," he said.

"You were at 50% earlier," Shigeru said with annoyance.

"It can't be helped," Kaworu said.

Chitose's face appeared in his HUD. "I suppose that means I'm up."

Her hair was unkempt, her limp was more pronounced than earlier that night, and she'd had grass stains on her kimono. She had arrived with Misato and Kaji and been decidedly vague about what she'd been doing all night.

"I suppose so," Kaworu said gravely. "memento mori, Schatz."

"… Thanks," she said, a little grudgingly, as though he'd wished her luck.

Fuyutsuki, who was the only other person present who knew any Latin, blinked.

Misato frowned, two facets of her personality at war. Kaworu wouldn't pilot. Chitose was dangerous and sometimes a liability. Misato's mission was to destroy the Angels. Her threat estimate of Chitose had steadily ratcheted upward ever since they met, and hadn't actually plateaued. If she was good at one thing, it was destruction. The Commander wouldn't like it. She had to destroy the Angels.

"Is whatever's affecting Kaworu going to affect you too?" Misato asked.

"No. Shall I prove it?"

"You might as well, although you won't be launching from here either way. Go ahead."

Chitose entered the cages and climbed into Unit-03. Kaworu nodded to himself. His work here was done. He ejected and set off for the showers.

"94.9%," Makoto reported.

Misato set her eyebrows. She'd known all along that Kaworu was holding back, given he could set his synch rate as high as he liked. Ever since the seventeenth Angel, she'd realised that Chitose had been, too. She'd wanted to stay under the radar and had deliberately kept her synch rate low, except when she needed a little more power. At this point, though, her cover was well and truly blown. The only question was whether she could raise it past two hundred at will, or if that could only happen when she was completely enraged.

"Fine," Misato said. "Mogami, you're piloting for this mission. Search and destroy. We've found the twelfth Angel."

…

Evas were at the upper limit of what was possible to fit onto an aircraft for long flights; the engineering details had only been worked out between when Asuka and Unit-03 had arrived. Short-distance deployments, such as to the beach at Sagami Bay, were handled by rocket-assisted aircraft, but it would be prohibitive to carry enough fuel for more than a few tens of kilometres. Instead, to support a five thousand ton robot required JATO and ramjets to cruise at several times the speed of sound. There was no way to hope to land something moving that fast on a carrier's relatively short runway, so Unit-03 had to be jettisoned into the ocean and recovered. The dropship could barely take off at all, so all the accoutrements had to be removed and carried by a second plane: its prog knives, a waterproofed needle gun, the plug, its cable and other power paraphernalia, the D-type equipment, whose cooling subsystem they had repurposed as heating, additional armour plates that would double as ballast, and of course the pilot.

"Why is _he_ here?" Chitose asked Misato, of Kaji, during the flight down.

"That's a good question," said Misato. She had had to come in person in case this Angel turned out to have long-range jamming abilities, to browbeat any intransigent navy men, and to watch Kaji.

"I'm here because Seele wants me to keep an eye on both of you," Kaji said, looking out a window.

"I see," Chitose said, slowly, connecting him with Kaworu's veiled warning.

"I'm still not going to _do_ anything to you," he said. "You fought an Angel bare-handed, and you're still alive. I'm not completely stupid."

"I hope not," she said, although this was untrue: it would mean that, rather than have to worry about an obvious threat, she'd have to worry about one that was completely invisible and would likely blindside her at the worst possible moment.

When the girl was out of earshot to go to the bathroom (a process complicated by the one-piece plugsuit), Kaji continued talking to Misato, in a low tone barely audible over the plane's jets and the howl of hypersonic wind. "Seele, however, is planning to make a move here."

"It's about time," she said. "I'm sick of waiting. What is it?"

"On the bright side, there's not going to be a whole lot more waiting. I think things are about to start moving very quickly. If things go right, I _might_ be able to get us all out alive."

"So might I, if you tell me what's going to happen."

Kaji shook his head. "You need to focus on killing the Angel. But I'm going to need you to trust me. I know, I know. But soon, I'm going to give you an order, and I won't have time to explain it. You'll have to obey it exactly."

She said nothing.

The water around Antarctica was still stained red; there was a gradient between it and the rest of the blue ocean, showing how far it could seep before it decomposed into its chemical constituents. Civilians believed it was from some sort of salt pigment from the meteorite that supposedly caused Second Impact. For years, Nerv had thought it was LCL leaked from Adam, but that didn't make sense any more, since Adam was a dormant embryo ten thousand kilometres away. In truth, it was the twelfth Angel's secretions, turning the hostile saltwater environment into an Adamite LCL bath that allowed it and its children to thrive, while they matured and prepared to seek out the Seeds. It was more of a murky brown than red or orange now, during the permanent winter twilight; the sun wouldn't rise so far south for months.

Unit-03 threw a colossal splash when it impacted the surface of the ocean. Hazmat-suited soldiers aboard the _Over the Rainbow_ hurried to shoot grapples around it and bring it aboard the carrier, while the support craft slowed and landed more elegantly.

Chitose shivered while the men worked at preparing Eva for sortie. Even inside the heated cabin, even with her thermal plugsuit, she could feel the bitter cold on her face. Misato donned one of the heavily insulated NBC suits to direct the prep; in five minutes, Eva was ready. Chitose donned a pressurised helmet, a hose connecting it to an oxygen pack on her back, and set out for the entry plug. Inside, she removed the helmet and inhaled the purified Lilithian LCL. The burst of neural static signalled synchronisation; she attached the power cable, pulled on the extra armour and D-type equipment, and sealed it, then pressed the button on her wrist so that her suit would balloon up and her body would properly mimic Eva's.

"I remember the footage of when Asuka used this suit against the eighth Angel," she said, twisting around to get a feel for how much clumsier she would be. "But we're not going to try to capture this one."

"There's no point," said Misato, from the carrier's bridge. Kaji stood beside her. Admiral Kuznetsov glared at them both from across the room; he'd never forgiven Nerv for making him look a fool with the sixth and fifteenth Angels. "There are only two Angels left after this one, and we know enough about them by now." Or only one more, accounting for the ten point fifth. "The data wouldn't be worth the risk to both of us. Besides, it's already full-grown; we couldn't contain it anyway."

Chitose nodded, put her knives into the suit's holsters (they had been heavily reinforced after Asuka lost her knife in Mt Asama), and picked up the gun.

"How does the Eva feel?"

"It's fine," said Chitose, tracing along where the seventeenth Angel's teeth had bitten it almost in two. The repair work was seamless. "No damage that I can feel, and the flight over hasn't torn anything. The scuba's annoying, but I'll manage. Are we ready?"

"When you are," said Misato.

Chitose dropped off the carrier. It was so cold that even salt water would have frozen solid, but apparently not Adamite LCL. The heating wasn't for the pilot, whose plug was well-insulated; Eva itself couldn't operate so far below freezing.

"I hope we can stay for a while," she said. "I love astronomy; I've always wanted to see the auroras, and it's best during the winter night. It's a shame it's a new moon; I'd like to see how the full moon looks from down here. But even this is pretty in its own way, you know? Endless seas of orange-red …"

"They say it's the blood of those who died," said Kuznetsov, hoping to unsettle her.

"It isn't," Chitose said, with the air of a tour guide describing a local wine-making process. "It's the blood of one who is about to die. moritura nos salutat," she added, even though no-one else present knew any Latin, because she still had Kaworu's warning on her mind.

Kuznetsov put his hand over the radio. "What is _wrong_ with her?"

"How long do you have?" Kaji asked.

"We've been wondering that for months," Misato agreed, and reactivated the radio. "Mogami. The submarines were destroyed in a rough circle about our position. Once you hit bottom, begin a spiral search pattern."

"Couldn't I just go straight toward the AT Field?"

"You can tell where it is?"

"Eva projects its own, right? So it can feel the interference patterns whenever there's another nearby, like how if you hold a magnet you can feel where a second magnet is by the force it exerts on yours. With a decent synch rate, pilots can piggyback on Eva's senses. Are we not supposed to be able to?"

"Mogami," Misato said. The girl was exhausting. "Where is the target?"

"It's hard to tell the distance; I can't see down here, so I don't really have any depth perception, and I don't have a reference for this Field. The direction is down and, ah, west of here. Call it eighty degrees west of north? Shall I swim toward it, or wait until I hit the seabed and walk?"

"Walk," said Misato. "The spawns have those paddle-like feet; I'm guessing they're better swimmers than you are."

"Got it."

"Depth at one kilometre," reported a ship science officer.

"Nothing on sonar?"

"Not yet."

"How deep is the floor here?" Chitose asked.

"Can the sonar pick up the bottom?" Misato asked the officer.

"Yes. It's rocky down there. Between fourteen and sixteen hundred metres."

"It feels like it's about forty-five degrees downward," Chitose said. "So, half a klick horizontally?"

There came a _ping_. The officer spoke up. "Large object detected inbound to Eva. Belay that, _multiple_ large objects."

Chitose slung her gun over her back and drew a prog knife in either hand: the gun only had eight rounds and couldn't be reloaded underwater.

"Mogami, try to disengage ASAP," Misato ordered. "The primary target is whatever's making them. Destroy it, and the others will supposedly die by themselves. Besides, it'll take too long, and without AT Fields they can't hurt you anyway."

"Roger." Chitose holstered one knife. "How many is multiple?"

"At least two," said the officer.

"Really."

"They're too close together. I can't make them out. Not more than five, probably three or four? They're closing."

Chitose turned on her headlight; it couldn't penetrate far through the thick LCL, but she could make out the approaching silhouettes.

Misato had been right: the spawns were fast underwater. Three of them swarmed Unit-03, and bounced off its AT Field.

"This must be how the Angels feel," Chitose said. "Being battered by things that can't do anything at all to me. I don't think I'm going to be able to disengage: they're faster than me. Which is also how the Angels must feel."

"So do what they do, and deal enough damage to one to scare the rest off."

"If they don't have AT Fields yet, I don't think they know how to be afraid." The mini-Angels kept attacking, without effect. "Do I even need to care? They can't do anything."

"Yes, because the Angel proper will bring down your AT Field, leaving you vulnerable."

Chitose nodded, and seized one of the Angels. She threw off its mates again with her Field, spun it round, found a patch of yellow on a hind leg without any armour studs, and stabbed into it. It thrashed at her; she dug her suit's clamps into the cut and pulled it open, like someone who cut open plastic wrapping to get purchase for tearing it off. The leg split apart.

"That's enough," Misato said.

"I haven't done enough damage to scare it off yet," Chitose said, like a schoolgirl telling her mother she couldn't go to a family picnic because she had homework.

"My God," said Kuznetsov, watching her methodically tear the leg apart.

One of the other spawns had got around behind her. Flailing against her AT Field, its claw went wide and sliced through one of her coolant pipes. Chitose gave an annoyed cluck and threw the injured Angel away, a moment before hitting the ocean bottom.

An alarm sounded. "The damaged pipe isn't working at all," said a tech. "The pressure's there, but no flow … I think it's frozen solid. That's 60/40 antifreeze in there!"

Chitose holstered her knife and drew her needle gun. One by one, she flipped her assailants under her and shot their feet, pinning them to the ocean floor. She turned back toward the Angel.

"Can you melt it with the power cable?" Misato asked.

"No, the hardware's not set up for that. And we can't modify it while it's down there."

"Sonar's picking up a large rock formation dead ahead of you, it's … oh. Wow."

Veiled by the orange-red ocean, the Angel slowly came into sight. Larger than even the thirteenth, it was like a massive bivalve, with two halves pointing upward, high enough to look like a rock shelf on sonar. The shell was decorated with a pattern with ten orbs, joined by ornate branches, like some impossible tree. Chitose approached slowly.

"Her sons grew like pearls inside her," she murmured, running her hand along its shell. It was room temperature to the touch, and seemed to hum gently. "She is weak; she depended on them to achieve Instrumentality."

"Mogami," said Misato. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm not much of a poet. My brain just doesn't work that way. But I still think there's something poetic about her. We're sort of the same, her and me. We're both alone, really, no matter what we want, even if we surround ourselves with others, and …"

"It's an Angel, Mogami. Don't … anthropomorphise it. Destroy it."

"… we both want to live. I'm honestly sorry." And with that, she drove her knife into the Angel.

The blade snapped off at the hilt. She was left holding a broken piece of metal, feeling foolish.

"So it's too tough to cut into," Misato said. "If it's like a mollusc, there's probably a hinge of soft tissue at the base. The core is probably inside."

"Second coolant pipe blocked!" reported a tech. "The ice is spreading inside!"

"Not an issue. The suit will protect her for long enough. Mogami, proceed."

"Incoming large object," said the sonar tech. "One of the spawns is loose."

"Deal with the primary target. Once it's down, they'll be defenceless."

Chitose crouched in the bulky suit, trying to get under the Angel, but if there was a hinge, she couldn't see it. She thrust her remaining knife in and jiggled it around, without effect.

The spawn swum up behind her. A moment before it rammed her, she felt the Angel dedicate its entire AT Field to neutralising hers.

"Oh," she murmured, in the moment before the spawn tore into her back.

The girl tried to wrestle the monster off, but the D-type equipment was too cumbersome. The spawn aimed directly for her entry plug; she thrashed hard, and it missed and instead carved gouges into her back, thighs, and waist. She gasped in pain and hit a button; explosives blew the diving suit's seals open, and it broke apart.

Several things happened very quickly. Her suit automatically deflated to its normal skin-tight conformation; Unit-03's four eyes were crushed under a hundred and fifty atmospheres of pressure; the spawn seized her in a bearhug; and she got a proper grip on her knife, stabbed it into a weak point under the spawn's right shoulder, then tore it open and fired her shoulder spike cannons, ripping it apart. She flipped around and kicked it away.

"Makoto?" Misato asked.

"The damage looks bad but not critical from here," replied Makoto, who was monitoring Eva and Chitose's vitals from Central Dogma with Shigeru, "but without the D-type, Magi estimates two minutes before Eva locks up. If the power cable comes loose, she'll be stranded down there."

"Then keep going," Misato ruled. She turned to one of the naval officers. "Be ready to winch her back in on my mark."

"Unh," said Chitose, her eyes scrunched shut, panting with pain. She half-paddled, half-climbed one-handed up the Angel's outer shell. Purple ichor leaked out of her wounds into the ruddy sea.

"The second spawn is loose and inbound," said the sonar operator.

"Mogami, we have no visuals any more. Do you still have the gun?"

She dropped back down, patted the ground in search of it, found it still attached to the diving gear, tucked it under her knife arm, and resumed climbing the Angel. The second spawn barrelled into her from behind; blind, she flailed at it, and managed to kick it down, propelling herself upward. It jumped back at her and stabbed a paw into her abdomen, tearing out what would have looked like intestines to anyone watching; she stabbed wildly at it until she found a gap in its armour, then shoved the entire knife in, pulled the wound flaps shut over it, and kicked it away. The spawn thrashed itself apart around the sonic weapon.

"Armour badly compromised," Makoto said. "Eva's taken critical internal damage. And you have about a minute before it locks up from the cold. Magi recommends you withdraw, repair, and try again later."

"No," Chitose whispered, her voice shaking with pain, holding her Eva's stomach closed. "Even stronger next time. Now."

"Third spawn inbound," said the sonar tech.

"Hurry," said Misato.

Chitose made it to the top of the Angel. She felt around, forced her fingertips into the gap between the Angel's two shells, and pulled. The shell gave a little, slowly, and she got her feet into the gap. With a sob, she wrenched the shell open; she couldn't see, but inside was the red core like a pearl, and, beside it, a half-formed foetus that would one day become another spawn. She drew her gun, aimed directly downward, and emptied her magazine. She scored three direct hits, on the foetus. It burst apart.

"Blue pattern unchanged," Makoto reported. "You missed the core. Major, you have to pull her out! Thirty seconds!"

"No," said Misato. "We can finish this now."

The cold had made Eva clumsier; Chitose's fine motor control was gone, she had to rely on gross movements. She dropped into the Angel and kicked off downward. The third spawn reached her at the same moment she touched the core; it drove its claws into Unit-03's back, tearing the muscles around the shoulder blade. She mule-kicked at it, crying, twisting around so it couldn't get a good angle to target the plug, and bashed the Angel's core again and again with her elbows, as the spawn tore through her armour and pulled out Eva's internal organs, one by one, and then ripped an arm out of its socket, and then a leg.

"That's done it," Makoto said, speaking quickly. "Its core is destabilising, it's going to blow in eight seconds."

"Eva won't survive the explosion," Shigeru said.

"Mogami!" Misato cried. "Raise your Field or get out of there!"

Kaji seized Misato's shoulder and whispered in her ear. "Now. Eject her plug."

Misato blinked. For an underwater mission, they had used a buoyant plug; it achieved buoyancy by having barely enough armour to survive the water pressure, and the spawn could get her with a spite swipe. Besides, Unit-03 would be doomed without a pilot to raise an AT Field.

"Trust me," he said.

She sent the ejection command.

The next thing Chitose knew was violent desynchronisation and G-forces, as the plug's ejection rockets kicked in. "Wha – what's going –"

The spawn followed her plug as it shot out of the dying Eva, and whipped its claws around it. A moment later, the Angel's core cracked, and it, the spawn, and Eva turned into crosses of orange light.

"Chitose!" Misato shouted into the mike, forgetting herself, before Kaji took her wrist and pulled her away. The carrier rumbled with the shockwave; bits of machinery shrieked in protest and broke apart.

"We need an evac plane ready ASAP," he told Kuznetsov, flashing his UN ID, which gave him a truly ridiculous amount of authority over anyone who wasn't in Seele's top ranks. "Make it a Snapdragon. We'll give advice on clean-up remotely; stand by for orders."

Kuznetsov gave them a sour look as they left the bridge. As soon as they were out of eyeshot, Misato pulled her gun on Kaji.

"Seele didn't need Unit-03 to exist after this battle," Kaji whispered, very quickly and clearly. "They planted a bomb on the flight over. There were two other agents here with remotes; they set it off when the Angel went. They want her dead at all costs."

"That's insane. What about the last two Angels?"

"Can we please stop pretending that the virus one never happened? One Angel, and if she dies, they'll have complete control of it. They don't need this carrier to exist any more, either, so hurry up and get to the plane!"

The Snapdragon AWACS craft rolled out to the flight deck at the same time that the entry plug bobbed to the surface, crumpled, scratched, leaking, but intact. Misato, back in her HAZMAT suit, threw a lifesaver with a rope over, while Kaji climbed into the cockpit and skimmed the pre-flight checklist. Chitose, her helmet back on and suit re-pressurised, opened the plug, deflated her suit again, and staggered over to the lifesaver; Misato and two seamen pulled her up.

"Ow," said Chitose, her voice trembling. "What happened?"

Misato wrapped an arm around her, pulled her along to the plane, and helped her in. Sailors were thick on the deck, repairing machinery damaged by the exploding Angel; no-one paid the Nerv team much attention. Kaji pressed buttons, and the cockpit closed over.

"Unh?" Chitose asked.

Two other aircraft lifted off the carrier. Kaji's eyes widened.

"Buckle up," he said. "Hurry."

The plane was large, but had few seats; Misato sat Chitose in the copilot's seat and belted her in, then assumed the brace position at the back of the cabin. Kaji hit the engines; they were pressed backward by the G-force as he shot to the end of the runway and into the sky.

Chitose took off her helmet; her face was pale and drawn from pain and exhaustion, her eyes bloodshot from sympathetic irritation, her cheeks wet with tears. "What happened? Why did I eject? Did you do a remote override? Is that it for Unit-03?"

"In a minute," said Kaji, concentrating on flying, "because, yes, and oh my absolutely yes. Now quiet down and let me think. We have until we make it to Tokyo-3 Airport to work out how to stop Seele from killing all of us and Nerv."

Chitose blinked. She turned to Misato, meaning to ask whether they could trust him at all, but was interrupted by the _Over the Rainbow_ blowing up.

It looked like an ammo dump accident, at first. A plume of flame and shrapnel rose up out of its centre; men, planes, and assorted equipment flew off into the water in pieces. The fore and aft halves tilted and began sinking. Moments later, more explosions went off. Fuel sprayed everywhere and caught fire; the support ships backed off and watched helplessly as the proud carrier went down with all hands.

The women watched as it sank. Then the voice of the man with the yellow hologram crackled over the radio.

"Agent Kaji. Can you confirm the death of the rebel?"

"Major Katsuragi's with me," Kaji said. "And the Fifth Child is deceased, repeat, confirmed deceased. She was on the _Over the Rainbow_ when it went up. Over."

"Ah. What a tragic waste. Report to Tokyo-3."

"Yes, sir. Over and out." Kaji rested his head on one hand, still paying attention to the plane. "Scratch that. We have until they realise you're alive before they blow us out of the sky, or until we land, and the entire UN army will be waiting for us."


	12. Tamiel

Ritsuko felt uneasy.

Normally, she was a woman comfortable in her own amorality. She had done things that would shock most of humankind, even those who had themselves done unspeakable things in the scramble for survival following Second Impact. She'd skipped right past the boring questions of euthanasia and late-term abortion. Off the top of her head, she had chemically altered her own brain, cloned Angels, put a coworker's brain into them, twice, tried to clone a human-Angel hybrid, manipulated her coworkers into almost certain death, including child soldiers, tried to kill at least two out of little more than petulance, incapacitated and tried to kill two different gods, and was actively involved in helping two separate factions of megalomaniacs achieve divinity and world domination. She had literally read treatises on ethics specifically to find taboos which humans had never broken, in the hopes of making a new discovery by so doing. She'd got into the habit of working alone simply because everyone else threw up too much and kept calling the police or committing suicide. Even her mother, who had had her own personality trisected and uploaded to Magi because it was 'convenient', had drawn the line at her method for 'stress-testing' the early synch systems.

She'd done all of this without even losing too much sleep. She was pragmatic about not wanting to see the end of what was left of homo sapiens, and, more importantly, she just wasn't the sort to be bothered by others' suffering or moral hangups. And yet, in spite of all that …

"Your report?" Ikari asked.

"Venkatesh's data was all we needed," she said. "Together with my own transferral research and the older tech, it's all finished and verified. The only thing now is to perform the operation."

"Prepare."

"Yes, Commander." She turned and left. Outside, she popped another modafinil and lit a cigarette. She felt the nearest thing to guilt she had in over twenty years.

Ikari picked up his phone. It was still before dawn, but Rei answered on the fifth ring. "Yes?"

"Rei. It's time."

For a moment, her face crumpled. A heartbeat later, it was smooth and impassive again. "Yes."

She dressed, looked for the last time at the kimono she had hung up so neatly in her wardrobe after the festival last night, and left. Half an hour afterwards, six silent electric Jeeps loaded with black-clad commandos would roll up to her apartment.

A few kilometres away, Shinji's phone rang. Drifting out of a happy dream, he grumbled and cursed Misato for getting that extension cable after the eleventh Angel, but it was in his nature to answer. "Yes? What? Is it another Angel? Okay. Aren't there laws against doing that sort of thing, if there's not an attack? I couldn't do it without wrecking the city again, couldn't you just take the train? This sounds like a really, really bad idea. Okay! Yes … how am I supposed to do that? You saw what happened last night. I'll try. Okay. Goodbye."

He shook his head at her insanity, but still got up, turned on the hallway light, and knocked on Asuka's door.

"Hello? Asuka? Are you awake? You have to get up. I'm coming in, okay? Please don't hit me again …"

He slid open the door, and was rewarded with a growl.

"Are you stupid? It's five a.m. What could possibly be so urgent? If this is about that blue-haired idiot, I'm going to tear off your …"

"Misato says we both have to go in to Nerv," he said; a moment later, Asuka's A-10 connectors flew out at him and bounced off his chest.

"I'm _not a pilot any more!_ So stop trying to drag me back into my psychotic mother's freak show horror womb with these idiotic tricks, and let me get some sleep!"

"She says it's a matter of life and death," Shinji said, taking a step back and raising his hands to protect his head.

A glass of water followed the nerve connectors and shattered against the wall. "It will be!"

Shinji dodged to the side and slammed her door shut. He could take a hint. He dressed and left the apartment. Half an hour later, four electric Jeeps would drive up.

…

Several kilometres away, there were no longer any civilian aircraft at the airport, only rows of UN combat planes landing. Some of them were already fuelled and armed. Major-General Reichner glared at them, as if they had done him great personal wrong, even though they had been under his command the day before. Now they answered to General Hyakutake, who had just arrived from Osaka.

"With all due respect, sir, this all still seems unnecessary," Reichner said. Both men could speak both German and Japanese, as well as English; the conversation was in Japanese. "Nerv is unconventional, but they have never violated the laws of war. We haven't even issued demands yet."

Hyakutake gave him a patronising look. "I should have thought that you of all people would remember that they had dozens of your men killed."

"With respect, sir, that was the Angels. Even the weakest of those abominations could wipe out entire divisions; they destroyed everything we sent at them."

"So when Nerv discovers that their tenure is at an end, they will destroy everything we send at _them_. Unless we can stop those Evas from deploying, Japan itself is lost. Or given over to those rainbow monsters. What are you waiting for?" he added to an adjutant.

The adjutant spoke into a phone. "Ten Jeeps. Six and fow-er. Do not harm the targets without our order, but wire the buildings. Be ready to terminate with extreme prejudice, even in the face of civilian casualties, over. Affirmative. Over and out."

The two general officers walked along the tarmac. They passed line after line of aircraft, some with pilots joking outside, all surrounded by men bustling about with supplies. A company of infantry marched past, all bearing loaded rifles. A Jet Alone unit guarded the airport; more surrounded the city, supported by tanks. Electronic warfare agents were busy accessing remote Magi ports.

"Well, what about Katsuragi, then?" Reichner went on. "She can't pilot."

"She knows their workings intimately. Without her skills, any resistance is defeated before it can even begin."

They passed a pair of MRLs, both of which had heat-seeking anti-air capabilities. If Misato panicked and overpowered Kaji, they wouldn't be landing anywhere else. Another company of soldiers sat nearby, having an early breakfast. Half had rifles, half mortars with a mixture of shells: fragmentation, high explosive, incendiary, poison gas canisters. Beyond them was another company, this one with rifles, heavy machine guns, and flamethrowers.

Reichner's 2iC, Colonel Mizrahi, who was following half a pace behind Reichner, caught his eye and scowled. He nodded, agreeing with what he knew Mizrahi was thinking.

"This is a violation of the accords of war," Reichner pressed.

"You will keep any further objections to yourself, or be relieved of duty. I do only what is necessary for the survival of my country."

Reichner felt Mizrahi's glare on the back of his neck. The colonel had a very sore spot about gas. Still, he was outranked. There was nothing he could do.

The sun finally rose, just in time to show three armoured VTOLs touching down. Each carried an N2 mine: one for the Geofront armour, one for the pyramid, and one spare.

They heard the drone of an engine from the south. A Snapdragon AWACS plane came into view, heading for the airport.

"In any case, it will only be a problem for little longer," said the General.

The Snapdragon came forward, rolled and yawed in a long J-curve, and touched down on the tarmac. Reichner balled a fist, as thirty men surrounded the plane, guns levelled. The cockpit opened, revealing Kaji and Misato in their flight gear.

"Hello," Misato said, an uncertain smile on her face. "Why is the military here?"

"Major Katsuragi!" shouted a soldier into a megaphone. "Put your hands up and step out of the plane!"

"I, ah, might have omitted some of the truth, Misato," Kaji said, loud enough for the nearest soldiers to hear.

"I see," Misato said. "Well, full disclosure? Me too."

Chitose popped up behind Kaji, drew his gun, and held it to his jaw. There were no towels on the plane; she was still in her yellow plugsuit, crusted with dried LCL, which looked horribly like blood. Her smile and tone were bright and chirpy. "Hi Kaji!"

The soldiers clacked their guns. Hyakutake snapped to a nearby lieutenant, "Get flamethrowers and nerve gas ready!"

"Fifth Child!" said the man with the megaphone. "Release him and leave the aircraft immediately. You have a count of ten."

"In hindsight, the timing for this is pretty narrow," Chitose said to Misato.

"Nine! Eight!"

The earth shook. The soldier with the megaphone glanced around; it sounded like one of the Jet Alones, but it had come from the direction of the city.

Eva Unit-01 sprinted toward them, smashing boom gates and vehicles too large to dodge like a man running through a room full of beach balls. Soldiers dived out of its path, leaving it to knock their Jeeps flying. Hyakutake drew his revolver and fired twice at Chitose; Unit-01 gestured, and both bullets bounced off a faint shimmer of orange light. Unruffled, she flipped Kaji over her back; he bounced against the side of the plane and hit the tarmac, stunned.

Unit-01 crouched over the plane protectively, picked up Chitose and Misato, lifted them to the entry plug, locked commands, and ejected.

"Am I late?" Shinji asked, looking around.

"Just in time," Misato said, climbing into the plug.

"Thank you," Chitose said, a moment behind.

The special weapons teams brought their weapons to bear. The poison gas teams couldn't shoot without risking friendly fire; that left the flamethrower crews. One spat out a tongue of burning napalm at them; AT Fields didn't stop slow-moving fluids, even ones that were on fire. Shinji hit the button to reinsert the plug, and the napalm splashed against its armour. Two VTOL gunships swooped around, firing missiles rapid-fire, but these bounced off its AT Field. Seeing a Jet Alone approach, Shinji synchronised through his passengers' mental noise, and ran for it.

"Is Mr Kaji going to be fine?" he asked.

"Don't worry; I didn't hurt him," Chitose said. "With my physique, I have to really try to injure someone."

"Okay," he said, not exactly reassured. "Misato, should I pick Asuka up?"

"What?! I told you to get her to Nerv an hour ago!"

"You know what she's like!"

She huffed, looked at the virtual display, and made a difficult decision. "No. There are soldiers all around. They must have got her by now, and Kaji said they'd execute her if they thought she was going to escape. An Eva can't exactly sneak up on them."

"I could fetch her," Chitose offered.

"From men with guns?" Shinji asked.

"I fought an Angel hand-to-hand."

"You lost."

"I was holding back."

Shinji gave her a flatly disbelieving look.

"You don't exactly do sneaky either," Misato pointed out.

"You'd be surprised."

"Just take us back to HQ," Misato ordered Shinji. "We'll figure out how to rescue her once we talk things over with the rest of Nerv. Rei's there; with three pilots in Evas, we'll be in a solid position to negotiate."

"Uh, about that," said Chitose. "Asuka said her mother went crazy, so I might not be able to get whatever's in her Eva to let me synch."

"Would that be an issue if we just scrubbed its data and used it blank, like Unit-03 was?"

"'Was'?" Shinji repeated.

"No, but Asuka might not like it if you formatted all that's left of her mother," Chitose said to Misato, then to Shinji, "There was a battle last night in Antarctica. I won, but Unit-03 was vaporised. Those spawns were much less dangerous in water, they were too buoyant, but there were lots of them and the Angel was cancelling my AT Field. Also, I just remembered, does anyone know where Kaworu is? He might possibly be planning to kill us all."

Misato rounded on her. "_Why?_"

"Seele might have told him to. I've been telling him –"

"_Why didn't you tell me this before?_"

"Because I only just remembered," Chitose explained. "Didn't I just say that?"

"Kaworu wouldn't do that," Shinji said.

"He might. Shall we ask him?"

"Yeah, no," said Misato, "let's try not telling him we're on to him." She made her way over to the control panel and made a call. "Makoto, are you in Central Dogma now?"

"Yes," he replied. "You ordered us all to stay here, so we're here. What's going on?"

"Later. I need you to run through all video feeds and see if the Fourth Child is still in the base."

"Give me a … yes, I see him, in the cafeteria."

"What's he doing?"

"Eating breakfast."

Misato facepalmed. "Okay, great. Let me know if he does anything, but don't let him know you're watching him. And tell Ritz to drop whatever the hell she's been doing all night and get to the cages. I need her advice; things are about to get really, really nasty."

Kilometres below, Ikari Gendo took a call. "Yes. I see. I shall investigate. The girl. I see. Yes."

Above him but below Eva, Rei floated naked in a glass tube of orange fluid. Ritsuko took a call, then shook her head.

"Stay here," she said. "Just … try to go to sleep. It'll all be over soon." She turned and left.

Rei trembled.

Above her, Kaworu finished his sushi and set his chopsticks down. He had a choice he could no longer put off making, and no idea what he'd do.

In an undefined location, ten monoliths shone in darkness. 04 and 11 were missing.

…

Unit-01 rode the catapult down to the cages. A reception party was waiting for them: Ritsuko, Fuyutsuki, Maya, a dozen Section Two agents, and the Commander. Shinji raised his eyebrows in surprise: normally it was just a few low-level technicians. Still, he docked as usual, powered Eva down, and ejected the plug.

He hopped out onto the walkway. "Hello. What's going on?" He looked at his father, who spared him only a moment's twitch of his pupils before returning his gaze to the plug.

Misato came out next, squeezing LCL from her hair and regretting not having worn more expendable clothing. "We need a strategy," she said without preamble. "Ritz, Commander, Subcommander?"

Chitose was last. "Is Unit-02 prepped? I think Shinji should stay in Unit-01 while I try to synch, in case it goes berserk, and it'll probably be best if Rei's there, too."

"Seize her," Ikari ordered.

She gave a startled cry, as a Section Two agent grabbed either arm and forced them behind her back. She struggled against them, but for all her combat training, she was pinned and out-massed by a factor of four.

"Commander!" Misato exclaimed. "What are you doing?!"

"The Fifth Child came without authorisation from the Marduk Institute," he said. "Do you know why? Because she destroyed her training facility and killed two thirds of those living in it."

Misato thought back to the photos Ritsuko had sent her, of the annihilated base in the Himalayas. "That was you?"

"I had to!" the girl cried. "They were holding me prisoner! They _never_ would have let me leave! I was going to be stuck there as just clone stock until I died! Or they lobotomised me! Like they did to the Chitosat and Kaworim!" She stomped on one guard's knee; he grunted in pain and twisted her arm enough to make her yelp, and a third agent helped him, blocking her thigh with his leg, keeping her from getting an angle to kick again.

"I was willing to tolerate your presence while you were useful," Ikari continued, "but now you have no Eva, and Seele has demanded custody of you. It's time to pay for your crimes."

Chitose yowled and thrashed harder. "They'll _kill_ me!"

Misato still hadn't forgiven her for hurting Asuka, but she had just killed an Angel that had been giving them grief for months, and she'd been injured protecting a comrade from the previous one. "We should talk this over," she said. "We can't afford to make mistakes now."

"She's still a potential asset," Fuyutsuki murmured in Ikari's ear. "Without the Second Child, if the Fourth is loyal to Seele, she's our only pilot for Unit-02."

"She saved Kaworu from the seventeenth Angel," Shinji said, finally looking his father in the eye. "She helped me with the thirteenth. And finally killed the twelfth. I don't know anything about the Himalayas, but we can't just hand her over."

"I have made my decision," said Ikari, with finality.

Shinji looked to Misato, who looked to Ritsuko and Maya, who both looked away.

"No!" Chitose cried. She headbutted a guard behind her; another smacked her hard in the back of the head. Ritsuko saw a little piece of green plastic flutter loose, and her heart skipped a beat. She put an arm in front of Maya's chest and took several rapid steps backward, pulling the tech with her.

"But –" said Shinji.

"Take her to the surface," Ikari ordered.

The Section Two Agents began to drag Chitose toward the exit, kicking and screaming.

"_No!_"

Misato saw Ritsuko's expression as she dragged Maya away, put two and two together, and tackled Shinji to the ground, a moment before there was a blast and a noise like bells and shattering glass.

She held him down until the ringing stopped, then looked up. Chitose was crouched over, braced against the catwalk, sobbing. Orange light played across her body; the eye whose coloured contact lens had been knocked out glowed dull red. Ritsuko, Maya, and Fuyutsuki stared, appalled. They and the walkway were drenched with an orange-red fluid. On the catwalk lay the skeletons, still in their uniforms, of the Section Two agents and of Commander Ikari.

The Angel alarm blared, drowning out Chitose's crying and the dripping of liquefied human. Shinji stared, his mind refusing to parse what he saw. Then another person entered the room.

"_Schatz!_"

"_Get back!_"

Kaworu's face twisted into a snarl and his eyes lit up; Chitose's red eye brightened to the same colour. The alarms flipped to AGGRAVATED ALERT. She leapt to her feet; each glared at the other, and orange light clashed between them.

Misato didn't even waste the time to yell for Shinji to move, she just grabbed his wrist and dragged him away from the AT-enraged Nephilim. Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki ran ahead, but Maya took the time to grab Shinji's other arm. They made it past the cages' blast door; Ritsuko hit a button and it slammed shut behind them.

Tamiel gestured at the pile of skeletons, and they flew up and at Tabris; he flinched before blocking, giving her an opening for a flying axe kick to the chest, driving him backward. She landed and threw a cross punch, which glanced across his jaw. He replied with a left hook, which she ducked; he changed direction, and a flare of AT energy dissolved the catwalk's support strut. She tackled him, sending them spinning through space, punching, elbowing, kneeing, scratching and biting each other. They crashed to the ground, with Tabris on top. She blocked a punch to her face, and a railing post tore itself free of its own accord and slammed into him from the side, knocking him off and into a corridor. Tamiel leapt to her feet and followed through with an energy blast; it angled off his shield and blew out the ceiling, down onto his head.

"_Let it bury you__! __It'll block the Terror!_"

"_I can't!_"

His Field sliced the falling ceiling to pieces and hurled them at her. She dodged most, blocked the rest, and lunged for him again. She landed two jabs to his stomach; he took them and replied with a roundhouse kick; she caught his leg under one arm and threw him. He levitated and spun, like the eighteenth Angel had done, but Tamiel was expecting it this time, and landed a solid uppercut on his chin.

"What do we do?" Maya asked, beginning to hyperventilate. Her counsellor had recommended she avoid stress during her psych leave. She'd had a bad feeling when Misato had ordered her in, but apparently not bad enough.

"It's their AT Fields," Ritsuko said. She found a terminal and logged in, tapping her fingers with irritation as it took a good forty seconds to boot. "It's enraging them."

"Then separate them," Fuyutsuki said. "They'll tear the whole base apart if they fight it out."

"Are we not caring that they're apparently both Angels?" Misato asked.

"Technically, they're Nephilim, not proper Angels," said Ritsuko, pronouncing it 'Nefurin'.

Misato gave her a 'are you really being a pedant at a time like this' look.

"They're not going to cause Third Impact," she said. "Probably. And they're not from Adamite embryos, they just have his genes cloned in, like we tried with Rei, except I doubt they have any Lilith."

"You knew?"

"I guessed it was why Kaworu could pilot. I didn't know about her."

Misato's phone rang: Makoto again. She gave it to Maya to fill him in.

"We can sort out what to do with them later," Fuyutsuki said, "_after_ my base is secure."

His pronoun took them all by surprise, even he himself: Ikari was really dead. Fuyutsuki was the new Commander. And there were two nigh-unstoppable monsters rampaging through what was left of HQ.

"Shinji," Misato decided. "Unit-01 could survive their AT crossfire and pull them apart."

He stared at her, his eyes twitching.

"Shinji," she repeated, a little louder.

"They were my friends," he said, dazed.

"I know. I know it's hard, but –"

"_But what?!_" he roared; everyone else took a step back in shock at the sudden fury of the normally placid Third Child. "But your friends haven't all been kidnapped by the Army, or turned out to be lying to you since you met them, or _killed your father?!_ Have I missed anything? What about Ayanami, maybe she's a Nephilim too?"

He was speaking rhetorically, but Akagi still flinched. He stared.

"Are you _serious?_ Is there anyone here who _isn't_ secretly an Angel?"

There was a groan of metal from somewhere else in the base, as Chitose hit Kaworu with an office.

"It's just them," Ritsuko said, "and they're only half-Angels, and Rei isn't even that, I couldn't –"

"Do you think I _care?_ What the hell do you expect me to _do?!_ I piloted Eva to hear praise from my father, and now he's _dead_, and three people who I thought were my friends were Angels all along, and he never even said my name since the tenth, so have I achieved anything at all since then, except almost getting killed, repeatedly? _No!_"

"Shinji!" Misato gasped. "We're depending on you!"

"No," he said, quietly again. "Solve your own problems for once. Leave me alone."

There came a crash of collapsing masonry.

"Shinji!" said Misato. "Shinji. If you don't do it, they're going to kill each other. Shinji!" He gave no response. "Fine. Ritz, call Rei up."

"Ah," said Ritsuko.

Misato gave her a cold look. "What. Is it."

"You're not going to like it."

"You didn't say that when you told me that the only way to fight the eighth Angel was to dunk a fourteen-year-old in a magma pool."

"Yes. Well, I … may have erased Rei's memories and personality. Permanently. She'll be a vegetable if we try to use her before they're all completely formatted, which will take another half hour, and then another hour to get her moving at all, and even then, there's no guarantee she'll be willing or able to pilot. And, honestly, that's all rather optimistic. Plus there's a significant chance she'll just die."

The others all stared at her in horror.

"What were you _thinking?_" Misato cried. "Why would you _do_ that?"

"Commander's orders," Ritsuko said.

Shinji gave a hysterical sob, and turned and ran. Misato made to chase after him, but stopped. It wouldn't achieve anything.

"It's a long story," Ritsuko said lamely.

"Is there _any chance at all_ that she could pilot?" Misato asked, turning back to her.

"Well … no. None."

Misato grabbed her phone back from Maya and hung up on Makoto. "Rei? Pick up!"

In Ritsuko's lab, Rei crouched in a ball, crying. Her hand bled from shards of glass embedded in the knuckles. Behind her, the shattered tube slowly leaked out the dregs of the LCL, and the computer terminal flashed ERROR: ABORTING. She was in no condition to even hear her phone going off at the far end of the room, never mind answer it.

Misato redialled Makoto instead. "Release the Bakelite. Drop the blast doors. Everything. Just get them apart!"

A Bakelite valve opened above the two Nephilim; Tamiel spared a thought to jam it shut, and Tabris hit her with a blow that could have destroyed a heavy tank. She rolled with it, her AT Field throwing obstacles such as load-bearing walls out of her way. He flew at her and kneed at her face; she dodged and swung him around and into a wall. He bounced off, and she jump-kicked him into Unit-02's cage.

It had remained largely unused since Asuka quit; Unit-02 was stored in LCL, as Unit-01 had been when Shinji first arrived at Nerv a year and a half ago. The lights were off, leaving the Nephilim illuminated only by the light of their attacks and defences. Tabris ricocheted off two support poles; Tamiel rammed him, straddled his chest, and slammed his head against the catwalk. He waved at a pole, and it broke free and flew toward Chitose's blind side, but she'd expected him to copy her earlier move. She raised a hand, blocking it with an octagon of orange light, and simultaneously elbowed him in the face, once, twice, three times, smashing his nose and drawing blood; he reversed his hand and blasted the floor out from under them both. He twisted out of her grip and spun in space, dropping her down into the LCL with a terrific splash. The glow in his eyes faded; he floated up and landed on what was left of the walkway.

"Stay down," he shouted into the darkness below. "Don't try to get up. Just … give me a minute. I need to think about this. I'm sorry, Schätzchen. I was too close; when you denatured them, the AT flare set me off. Seele wants … I need to think."

By way of response, there was a glub of air from below. The LCL had been left to stand; it would be harder to breathe than air, but she'd live. The alarms finally deactivated.

He shook his head and pushed his broken, bleeding nose back into place with an audible click. When they'd learnt martial arts, he'd got right into the arts part, but she was always more interested in the martial. On top of that, she'd obviously practised specific counters for most of his moves. "I really shouldn't have shown you my fighting style in the sims."

The lights turned on, revealing Misato walking toward him, gun in hand.

"Hello, Major," Kaworu said, trying a smile. She pointed her gun at him, and he gave it up. "You know that won't work."

She put it away, but not her glare. "What. The hell."

"Chitose and I are Nephilim," he said. "Born of Adam. Seele tried hundreds of trials to achieve this. Many have some of his genes, but we were the only two to manifest viable S2 organs, and AT Fields. We've been avoiding one another to prevent an incident like this, ever since Berlin."

"You two caused that?"

"This was before the effects of AT Field interaction were well-understood. And before she learned how to control her special ability. She calls it her capacitance attack. You know how camera flashes work? It behaves similarly, except that instead of light, it creates an AT explosion."

Misato thought of Berlin, the Himalayas facility, the destruction of the seventeenth Angel. The other powers explained the Seele goons from when she first arrived, and the eighteenth Angel, where Chitose had used her Field, just enough to break its defence and take the edge off its attacks, but not enough to be visible.

"Her powers appeared shortly before mine. Asuka was taken off-base while the scientists studied what she could do, and tried to see whether they could induce a similar awakening in me and the other attempts. They couldn't, but a few days later my powers developed anyway. We went down to breakfast; as soon as we saw each other, we flew into rages, with no understanding of how to calm down, or what our powers could do. We duelled until she used her capacitance attack and destroyed the base. I barely survived. Our handlers were all killed in the crossfire or explosion."

"Why are you both here now?"

"I am because Seele willed it," Kaworu said simply. "They wanted a competent pilot, who would open the doors for them when Instrumentality was at hand. She is because she wants to be free, and she cannot be if Angels or Seele destroy the world."

"The Human Instrumentality Project. You know what it is?"

"Of course I do. I'm its centrepiece. A less ambiguous term for Instrumentality might be 'apotheosis'. The desire to turn a human into a god. To achieve power, immortality, and knowledge, in one vessel. To perform the forbidden ritual, and combine the Fruits of Knowledge and Life."

"That would be the Nephilim?"

"We are one manifestation of that goal," he said. "Another is Unit-01. The ultimate goal, however, is to transplant a working S2 organ into a living human, to cheat death. The Human Instrumentality Committee wishes to perform this ritual on themselves, and ascend to a higher form of life."

"You mean they want to turn themselves into Angels?"

"Yes. Of course, given the … antagonistic nature of the AT Field, they will reserve this privilege for themselves. They have partitioned the world, and each shall have their own region for his dominion."

"They want to rule the world, as emperors," Misato said.

Kaworu shook his head. "No. As gods. Proud, vengeful gods."

Misato set her jaw. "Then I'm going to stop them. And you are going to stay out of my way."

He raised an eyebrow. "You have no usable Evas, you're surrounded by elite troops outnumbering you a hundred to one, and you have literally nothing that can even scratch me."

She stared the half-Angel down.

"My team and I have spent the past eighteen months killing beings that lesser men have taken for gods. Every single one of them could have destroyed the human race ten times over. We've fought them, seventeen times, and won, seventeen times. Seele thinks I'll give up if they take my weapons and set the entire world against me? You can tell your masters that _I am not afraid_."

Kaworu watched her turn and leave, but he did not move, and he did not pass that message on.

…

Not far away, Shinji curled in a ball, crying for his lost friends and faith and future. He stayed that way for long enough that time stopped meaning anything. Sometime later, he felt a soft hand on his back. A girl sat next to him, and pulled his head down onto her lap to cry. She twined her fingers through his hair and stroked it gently. He wept like that for a minute longer, before wiping his eyes and looking up at her.

"A–Ayanami? D–Doctor Akagi said …"

"I am a coward," Rei whispered. She had showered and dressed again, and smelled of nothing except herself. "I ran away."

"I … I ran too."

She said nothing, but ran her fingers through his hair again.

"I don't want to go back. Please don't make me go back."

"I won't," she promised.

"I'm glad you ran."

She said nothing for a while. Then, at a whisper, "Yes."

"… Are you an Angel?" he had to ask.

"No," she said. "I should have been. I am not."

She pulled his head back down to her lap and ran her fingers though his hair again. He let his eyes fall shut.

…

Five holograms lit up around Commander Fuyutsuki.

"Where is the girl?" Kihl demanded said without preamble. "Where is Ikari?"

"She killed him," Fuyutsuki said shortly. "Using her Angelic powers. We would have appreciated forewarning about that."

"We told you to give her up," said Red. "We told you she was dangerous."

"She then duelled the Fourth Child," Fuyutsuki continued. "Who used _his_ Angelic powers. By my count, that makes three Angels that you've let into our base."

"Two," Kihl corrected, not bothering to quibble over the ninth. "They share Adam's soul. When one dies, the other will become the final Angel. And we do not answer to you. You answer to us!"

"Then, my answer is that, of our five pilots," Fuyutsuki began counting off on his fingers, "one has had her memory wiped by Ikari as part of his insane plan to resurrect his dead wife, the UN army kidnapped one, on your orders, one is blubbering in a corner, and the last two are an Angel trying to kill half of itself. We cannot make the Fifth Child do anything without a pilot to defeat her AT Field. Give us the Second Child, and we will give you the Fifth."

"We will hold the Second until you have surrendered Nerv to us," said Green.

"Then I don't see how you expect me to apprehend half an angry Angel."

"My patience with your tone wears thin," Kihl warned. "First, stop Ikari's plan for his wife. Then, surrender to us all of Nerv's Evas; Adam, and all cloned cells; all of Venkatesh's data; and Akagi's refinement of it. Forget the rebel. Tabris is more than a match for her."

"That is a complete list of your demands?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"If you dare consider refusal, it will mean your death, and we shall simply take it all."

"No. My apologies, Chairman, but Nerv is in disarray right now. The Commander has been killed and there are two half-Angels rampaging through our headquarters. I will comply with your wishes, but it will take time to arrange, under the circumstances."

"Then we shall assist. The UN army is standing by."

"I must decline. My staff is panicking from the battle; the presence of armed men would push them too far."

"You are sentimental, Fuyutsuki."

"Only when cruelty would not achieve results, Chairman. Give us time, and we will comply to the letter with every one of your wishes, and surrender quietly, with no fuss or risk. I am not Ikari; I never approved of his treachery. I have no designs on Instrumentality. If I did, I would have betrayed Ikari well before now."

The Committee considered this.

"You have until sunset to deliver everything and surrender unconditionally," Kihl ruled. "If there are any failures, we shall send the Army."

"There will not be, Chairman," said Fuyutsuki. The holograms vanished and the lights came back on, revealing Misato and Ritsuko behind him. "How long until sunset?"

"Twelve hours," Ritsuko said, lighting a cigarette. "Assuming they believe you, and they keep their word and don't attack before then."

"If they do?"

"We're doomed," said Misato. "We couldn't hold out against a company without Eva, and they have an entire army out there. Shinji's run off somewhere, and even if I knew where he was, I don't know how to get him to pilot. I … I was never great at being a mother to him."

"And if they wait until sunset?"

"We'll have a pilot then," Misato said, checking her gun. Loaded, with a spare clip.

Ritsuko held her cigarette between her fingers and exhaled. "You're insane. They must have at least a platoon guarding her. They might as well have an entire division. If she's even still alive, and still in your apartment, and you do somehow get all the way out there and then all the way back, we still don't know if she can even pilot. She didn't quit because she wanted to retire early; she quit because her synch rate dropped to zero when she realised her insane dead mother was what let her synchronise. What makes you think that's changed?"

"It probably hasn't. But I'm not talking about Asuka, I'm talking about Shinji. I can't get him to pilot with just words. It's going to take actions. It's going to take me risking my life to save the girl he loves. If I can get her back, so good. If I die, it's still an action. Maybe it'll be enough to make him realise we care, and get him back into Eva."

"You do realise they'll execute Asuka, just to be sure, if you try and fail," Ritsuko said.

"Yes, but I also realise that they'll do that anyway if we surrender. Once the Committee's all got S2 organs, they're not going to want any competition. They've already destroyed one Eva; they'll do the rest, as well as anyone who's ever laid eyes on one, and especially the pilots. Why did you think they wanted everything kept so secret all this time? So that it's easy to contain now. The only chance any of us has to leave here alive is if we win."

"Against the entire UN?"

Misato sighed. "We don't have any other choices right now. If we can get even one Eva working and hold off the first wave, we'll be in a position to negotiate. We could try talking to Maj-Gen Reichner, if we could get a full parley; he's an honourable man and he's fought alongside us. We could try to expose Seele and maybe make them lose control of the army. We'd have more options than we have now. It's our only hope. The question, is what do we do with the Nephilim."

"Well … they _are_ both viable pilots …" Ritsuko mused.

Misato stared. "Are you out of your mind?"

"You're the one who just said we were out of options."

"Of them, one is literally working for the organisation that wants to kill us, and the other just murdered our Commander and half our security staff."

"I grant you it's not ideal," Ritsuko admitted, "but I don't think Kaworu is truly committed to Seele. I think they never let him around anyone else his own age, and now that he has, he's made _friends_, and he isn't going to let them die. Borderline omnipotence notwithstanding, he's a teenage boy; he's not going to tell his girlfriend that he let her best friend be executed. As for Chitose, she only ever had a problem with Ikari personally, not with the rest of us. She has a good sense of self-preservation, and Seele wants to kill her, too. Either could be usable."

"Your gut intuition about a boy you've barely ever spoken to is not a good foundation for any sort of plan," said Misato. "And it doesn't matter if she doesn't 'have a problem' with us. This isn't the first time she's cost us high-value personnel. Asuka, the Commander, at least half the blame for Shinji refusing to pilot now, arguably even Kaworu, and she's just destroyed about ten percent of HQ … what would she have to do to make you not want to let her pilot?"

"Lose," Ritsuko said simply. "Our backs are to the wall; we have to take any chance we get."

"Katsuragi is right," Fuyutsuki ruled. "God knows we can't afford to lose whatever she blows up next. Right now, they're restraining each other. We'll leave them, and plan Katsuragi's –"

There was a crash from outside.

Misato was first out. It came from Unit-02's cage, where Kaworu was still guarding Chitose; or rather, where she had been. He was still there, looking sheepish, but the base of the dam holding the LCL in had blown outward, and the LCL had washed out. They could read the word 'SORRY' scratched into Unit-02's foot.

"And now what was briefly a potential asset has turned into a mass-murdering half-Angel loose in the base. Again," Ritsuko undertoned. "And nothing's keeping _him_ here any more."

"Do you know where she went?" Misato asked Kaworu.

"Well." He pointed at Chitose's farewell message. "That might mean the collateral damage or my nose, but I doubt that because she doesn't care about one and the other has regenerated by now." He was right; his face looked as good as new, other than being crusted in blood. "I suspect she actually means that she's going to murder the Chairman of the Human Instrumentality Committee."

Fuyutsuki considered this. "If Seele controls the military, than destroying them could save us. Will she succeed?"

"I doubt that, too," Kaworu said. "Partly because he has some … special bodyguards, but mostly because I don't think she actually knows where he lives, beyond 'somewhere in Germany'. It's quite a big country."

They considered this.

"Speaking of not knowing where people are," said Ritsuko, "where's Kaji?"

…

Three soldiers stood guard at one end of the airport. One had a cigarette; another was staring at some passing clouds; the third was actually scanning a back road to the airport for any threats. An Eva didn't exactly require a lot of attention to spot, but he was a professional, and as it so happened he did spot something: another soldier, driving a Jeep covered by a tarp.

He waved as it approached and slowed. "Hi. Who's your CO?"

"Captain Shikinami," the driver said.

The sentry frowned. "Wait, you're a woman. And what are you, sixteen?"

"Fifteen, actually," she said, "people are always thinking I'm older, though." There were two snaps from behind the sentry; his comrades' bodies floated up and into the Jeep, and a tarp folded itself neatly over them; for a moment, another four dead soldiers were visible under it. She patted the passenger seat. "Do you know any passwords or other security measures that there are to stop me from borrowing a plane?"

The sentry nodded, and climbed into the truck. She drove along the road, humming a J-pop cover of _Angel with a Shotgun_.

"I could do with a shotgun, actually; I think one would be useful later. I'd really like to look around at all the stuff here and find one, but I don't think I have time. Your friends have probably already found the first platoon I ran into. They're not really identifiable as human any more, even with DNA testing, but what else would it be? Especially given a Jeep's missing and its GPS is deactivated. Oh, by the way, do you know how to fly a plane?"

"I'm infantry," he said.

She tutted. "That's no reason not to learn. I wonder if I could? Could it be any harder than piloting an Eva? This Jeep's pretty easy. Then again … ooh, do you know where Kaji-san is?"

"Who?"

"The man who I came with. He has a ponytail and doesn't shave properly?"

"I don't know."

"Hmm. Also, I was thinking I should probably arrange for a distraction. Do you now where the nearest ammo dump is? And are there N2 mines here? You must have brought at least one if you were worried about going against an Eva."

"I don't know."

"You're not a very inquisitive man."

"I'm just a private. They don't tell me anything. Need to know."

"Nothing?" Chitose asked, one hand on the wheel, looking around the airfield with unbridled curiosity, her tone still buoyant but a little disappointed. "Well … here's my line of thinking. I need someone who can help me past security here, and I need someone who can tell me about what ordinance you have. I wouldn't want to risk having two hostages at once, given you are rather a lot bigger than me and I'm only mostly invincible, so the logical course of action would be to repeatedly find a new friend, kill the old one, and stop when I find someone more helpful."

"I … heard someone mention them. Probably in armoured VTOLs. I'd guess Skarmories. That's all I know."

"Is there some sort of procedure for detonating N2 mines, do you know? I mean, with atomic bombs, if you set off a regular bomb next to them, you don't get a chain reaction, because the fissile material never reaches critical mass, but this is different technology. The last time I set one off I used its detonator properly, but I don't think I'll have time for that here."

"I don't – I've never heard anyone say anything about that."

"Hmm. Neither have I, and I've read that they use cryogenic octaazacubane, so probably not."

"How on Earth do you know that?"

"A manual which a boy called Kensuke told me how to find. I ask lots of questions and I read a lot. It's surprising how often people are surprised what I know, given that. The manual also said that N2 mines are normally stored in an armoured and refrigerated bunker, so that a sneak attack can't set them off, but Nerv isn't in a position to try that anyway. Skarmories are bombers, aren't they, and you've been expecting to use one in a first wave against the Geofront armour, so they're probably still loaded, aren't they?"

"Maybe."

They came to a makeshift fence with another sentry.

"Back already?" asked the second guard.

"We're supposed to bring forward some more ammo," said the first.

"What for? They can't fight us. And not a lot of women in the Army," said the second to Chitose. "You had to've lied about your age to get in."

"No, she's eighteen," the first said. The second shrugged and let them through, to the runways laden with warplanes.

She drove along to a bomber surrounded by fighters, one so squat and heavily armoured it looked like it wouldn't be able to take off. Another three soldiers were guarding it.

"Hi," Chitose said. "Is there an N2 mine on that plane?"

"That's _insanely_ classified information," said their sergeant, hefting his rifle and disengaging the safety. The other two soldiers followed suit. "The sort of thing no private would ask, not without signed written orders, unless she happened to be a spy. A really bad one. Also, I don't think we have any women in the rank and file in this division; I only know of women officers. And spies."

"I'm definitely not a spy."

Her hostage mouthed 'she's a spy' to the sergeant.

"Who's your CO?" said the sergeant, hoping to catch her handler too.

"Captain Shikinami."

"Never heard of him."

"She. And she's really very good."

"Do you have her phone number?"

"No," said Chitose, and snapped the men's necks by blinking. Her passenger lunged at her; she killed him without looking. She telekinetically lifted her tarp, dropped all four men under it, and looked through her victims' belongings. The first lot of soldiers had been a sapper team, laying shaped charges around the Geofront armour, presumably to save using an N2 mine that would obliterate much of the city; one of them had had a mass of plastic explosives and a remote detonator on him, now lying loose. She levitated the plastic and smooshed it against the plane's belly, and pocketed the remote.

"Hey there, honey. Come here often?"

"Hello, Kaji," she said, turning around. "How did you find me?"

"It's my job to notice details, like your face even when you're in disguise and wearing that concealing cap. Pretty ballsy of you, by the way. I would never have dared it."

"Actually, at least seven people have made me so far, counting you," Chitose admitted. "And I think most of these guys don't even know about me; Seele must have assumed Kaworu would kill me, and not bothered warning them. Why are you still free? I'd assumed you would have been taken for interrogation somewhere."

"I'm a _really_ good fast talker," he said. "Weren't you covered in LCL earlier?"

"I showered," she explained. She'd wondered whether it would be worth the time, but decided that her disguise wouldn't hold up for long enough if she was spattered in what looked and smelled like blood, and it wasn't as though she couldn't spare a few minutes. Nerv couldn't stop her, and Kaworu was no match as long as she stayed away from catwalks he could drop her off.

"Hey!" called another soldier. "You! Don't you know she's –" He was cut short with a crack.

"Eight. Do you have the keys to one of these planes?"

"What did you think I've been doing for the past half hour? It's this Zig, here."

"Hey! You two! Stop!"

Bullets flew overhead. Kaji ducked; Chitose gestured in all directions, and the nearest five planes flipped, bounced, and burst into flames. She turned, spotted the man shooting at her, and turned him to goo and bones. Bones are mineral and hold together even after cells are denatured; she could grind them down by brute force like she did her old minder and the guards who came to take her back, all those months ago, but that took time and was only useful for hiding a body.

Kaji hopped into his plane and turned on the radio. "Mayday, mayday, the Fifth Child is at the airport! I'm taking off!"

Chitose threw two more planes up in the air, blew one of them to bits, made sure that she was obscured by smoke and flaming debris, and hopped into Kaji's plane, a two-seater with no free space. She pulled her cap down low over her face and tucked her hair into her shirt. He shut the roof and hit the engines.

One of the planes she'd thrown had hit another and set the second one on fire too; another had done the same for a fuel tanker, which went up like a volcano, raining scraps of burning fuel across the entire airport. Firefighting teams sprayed foam liberally, and the Jet Alone strode into the blaze, looking for her.

Kaji's radio crackled. "Where do you think you're going?" asked Hyakutake. "Over."

"Away from the psychotic Angel girl with a personal grudge against me. Fighting her isn't my job. Over." Kaji flew up and away, heading west.

"We need your intel on the ground. Land at the emergency airstrip, south of here. Over."

"Negative. Our mutual benefactor has just requested my company. Over."

"That's convenient. Over."

"Hardly. He wants to chew me out in person for failing to notice her stowing away for the entire flight. It sounds like fun. Maybe there'll be cake. Over."

"Maybe there'll be a bullet in your head. Over."

"Maybe. Either way, he sounded angry. I'm not going to be the one to hold him up. Over."

"Fine. Run along, little spy. Over and out."

Kaji killed the radio. "He's about to call ahead and confirm that with the Chairman. We'll be shot down in minutes. Any ideas?"

"Yes! I arranged a distraction for this very contingency. Brace yourself!" So saying, she pulled out her detonator and pressed the button.

The explosives blew up the Skarmory, set off the N2 mine, triggered the other two, and turned the entire airport into a mushroom cloud. The shockwave spun their little Zig around like a top; Kaji swore and rode the wave for over a kilometre before righting the plane.

"_Are you out of your fucking mind?! __You Goddamn lunatic! __I wanted a distraction, not __fucking__Armageddon!_"

"What, you don't think that'll distract him?" Chitose asked, concerned.

"I – you –"

"I mean, an N2 mine was a pretty good distraction the last time I set one off on top of a military base I'd just AT-blasted. Also, and this isn't really related, but do you know why people keep calling me insane?"

…

The Nerv leadership looked up, hearing the rumble from above.

"What the hell was that?" Misato asked.

"Are they bombarding us already?" Fuyutsuki suggested.

Ritsuko checked her sensors. "From the seismograph, I'd say that someone just dropped an extra-large N2 mine on the airport. The epicentre was far away enough that our armour should be fine, maybe with some minor damage."

"The UNTMF has no reason to destroy their own forward base. There's only person who would want to, who also happens to be a walking N2 mine, and who doesn't much care about collateral damage. And _you_ wanted to put her back in Eva."

"Honestly, I'm more curious than ever about what would happen, now. What are you –?"

Misato power-walked to the nearest armoury. Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki followed, and found her collecting a second gun, running shoes, two grenades, and a wad of plastique. "They're distracted now. I'm going after Asuka."

"What? But they'll be on top alert now, and for all you know, Asuka might have died in the blast."

Misato shamelessly stripped out of her usual uniform and dressed in a set of army fatigues. "They can keep up full alert for twelve hours. It's now or never. If I don't make it back, tell Shinji I'm sorry."

Ritsuko opened her mouth to say something, but couldn't think of a good counterargument, and then it occurred to her that she was probably seeing her friend for the last time.

"Good luck, Misato," was all Fuyutsuki said.

Ritsuko nodded.

Misato saluted both, swallowed, said, "Goodbye," and turned and left.

…

Kaworu stood unmoving, his head bowed. He still hadn't really made his decision. He'd warned Seele that Chitose had escaped, but that didn't mean anything. It had been a matter of minutes before they figured it out anyway; she had a way of making her presence known.

The two arguments warred in his head for the last time. He owed everything to Seele: his life, his world view, his duty. He'd already failed them. He liked his fellow pilots. He didn't want them to die. He didn't want to see the world as it would be after Instrumentality, not after he'd seen what it was like before. But he owed Seele.

Memories ran through his head: making music with Asuka and Shinji, staying up late to talk to Chitose on the phone, that time Hikari had shyly kissed him on the cheek, once when he'd held his own at basketball against Toji, even lunch with that girl whose name he couldn't remember any more. Defeating the fourteenth Angel, the celebratory meal after. One time when he'd been out walking with Hikari, and she'd silhouetted the sunset, and he'd spent two hours that night painting the image.

He tried to remember his father's face, back in Neuburg-Schrobenhausen, and was only slightly surprised to realise that he couldn't. Those years had been overwritten by his experiences of the past few months, when he'd finally learnt the true meaning of humanity.

His connections to back then, however, remained. It was the foundation of everything he was. He couldn't throw that away without knowing what else he could be.

He stood unmoving, his head bowed.


	13. Lucifer

"_This is the __U__nited __N__ations__ Tokai Military__ Force. __By special UN order, m__artial law has been declared in the Tokai district. A curfew has been imposed. All citizens are to remain in their homes until evacuated by authorised military personnel. Those caught violating the curfew will be shot without warning. Anyone with information about Nerv is invited to call the special hotline at 1-2-3, __repeat 1-2-3__. Anyone coming into contact with any Nerv personnel is required to inform the __UNTMF__ by the hotline as soon as possible__; __photos__ of senior staff are currently being dropped across the city__. __T__his is the __U__nited __N__ations__ Tokai Military__ Force …_"

Misato vaulted over a back fence and hid under a tree as a helicopter went overhead. This was harder than she'd expected, and she'd expected a suicide mission. The streets were crawling with soldiers, methodically pulling civilians out of the burning city. She'd hoped to be able to mingle with them to make it to her apartment, except that it had been one of the first places evacuated, and there were mugshots of her all over the ground. They sensibly were trying to clear out any possible cover Nerv might use to get their pilot back. Between the soldiers, the curfew, the aircraft buzzing overhead, and the various armoured vehicles patrolling the streets, it had taken her the better part of two hours to make it six hundred metres from the egress, even with the smoke thick in the air from the N2 explosion and burning city blocks. Now that she was there, it looked even more futile. There had to be fifty soldiers in the block, with mounted machine guns, and probably snipers and God only knew what else. They had more men than she had bullets.

Still, giving up was just as hopeless. She probably wouldn't even make it back to base; it was miraculous enough that she'd made it as far as she had. Once she had Asuka, they could grab one of the Jeeps. Only Asuka had to make it back alive. She tore off her Nerv insignia, pulled on her military beret and sunglasses, checked her gun's silencer, and marched straight up to the apartment. Two guards spotted her immediately and trained their rifles on her.

"Halt!"

"Put those down, you idiots," she said, projecting as much authority as she could into the order, flashing her Nerv ID.

Soldiers are trained to listen to superior officers almost reflexively; officers are trained to give orders in such a way that soldiers will obey. The guards hesitated while she walked up, just for a few seconds.

"You're Major Katsuragi Misato," one said, uncertain. "You're under arrest."

She shot him point-blank.

The second soldier clubbed her with his gun; she fell into him, bringing both to the ground. He was twice her size and pinned her gun hand; she pulled her spare and shot him too. She kicked him off her.

'Silencer' is a misnomer, as one can reduce the noise of a gunshot from something which will cause permanent hearing damage to something like a firecracker. There was immediately a crackle of radio chatter. Misato bolted up the stairs.

She had to shoot another three soldiers to get into her apartment. It had been ransacked. She passed over the broken doors and furnishings; ignored the looted beers lying around; barely hesitated over Pen-Pen, shot dead in her bedroom; scooped up Asuka's A-10 connectors in the hall; and found Asuka, hands cuffed behind her to a radiator in the dining room. She was still in her nightclothes, had a black eye, and there was what looked like an explosive collar around her neck. Misato hadn't thought of that, and hadn't brought the tools to disarm it.

"Misato," Asuka said, her usual bravado gone. "What the hell is going on?"

"I think I've made a mistake," said Misato. The sound of radios was getting quieter, not louder. The soldiers weren't going to bother storming the apartment. Either the building was wired, or there was a big X on an artillery officer's map. "Asuka – I'm sorry." And she bent down to hug the girl.

Outside, the captain counted his men. "Everyone minus the number of bullets."

"Shall I get the bodies out?" asked his lieutenant.

The captain shook his head. "Our orders were clear. The fate of the world is at stake. I'm sorry. Xinping, do it."

The combat engineer nodded and pulled out a detonator. He disabled the safety, hesitated, and pressed the red button. His thumb slid off an orange sheen.

"Please don't press that," said Nagisa Kaworu, walking up. He wore his black velvet yukata and an affable smile, although he was scuffed and had obviously been in a nasty fight.

"Our orders …" the captain began.

"… are superseded by mine," said Kaworu, showing his Seele ID. He was the sixth-highest-ranking member of the organisation. "Maintain your perimeter. I shall deal with them myself. They're more valuable alive."

The captain frowned. Five of his men were dead, and a fourteen-year-old apparently had the authority to tell him not to avenge them.

"Understood?" Kaworu asked, with a pleasant tone that still managed to stress that it would be very little hassle to simply vaporise the captain and his company.

"… Yes, sir." The captain nodded to his men, and they stood down. As soon as he was out of earshot, he radioed back to base for instructions.

Kaworu walked up a staircase of light to Misato's balcony. The door was broken open; he walked through and found Misato and Asuka, embracing and waiting for the end. He waved his hand, and Asuka's collar and cuffs opened themselves.

"Huh? … Smarmy? What's going on?" She rubbed some feeling back into her wrists.

"Are you here to finish us off?" Misato asked, helping Asuka to her feet.

"No. I'm bringing you home."

"Why would Seele tell you to do that? I thought you were on their side."

"I changed my mind," he said simply.

Those four words entailed months of soul-searching. He couldn't leave Seele without knowing what else he could be; he'd spent his entire life with them, he had no other choice. But Hikari and Shinji both loved Asuka, and Kaworu loved both of them. When that thought occurred to him, the answer shone through, unstoppable as the dawn. It wasn't a question of divided loyalties; it was a question of whether she would live or die, whether to do the right thing or the wrong thing. If the price of the right thing meant losing himself, then so be it.

"Are you well, Miss Soryu?"

Asuka pulled out of Misato's arms to show she could stand. "Better than I could be, considering I was just stuck with those _Schweine_ for the entire day."

"Well enough to run six hundred metres in under two minutes while dodging nerve gas and incendiary bombs? I can't block those." He offered a hand to each woman. Asuka hesitated, until Misato gave her a nod.

"Block?" Asuka repeated, taking his hand.

"I promise I'll explain when there's time," said Misato, "but for once in your life, I need you to just do as you're told without asking questions."

Kaworu led them down his staircase of light and down to street level. "Just act like everything's normal, you do this every day, and you're both my prisoners."

"Sure," said Asuka, "because you apparently have Angelic powers, nothing out of the ordinary at all about that."

"Calm down," Misato said to Asuka, "don't think about … anything at all, pretend you're just going for ice cream –"

"Hey! Stop!" A burst of gunfire rattled overhead.

As one, they broke into a headlong sprint. An alarm sounded, and gunships converged between them and the Geofront ingress.

Four kilometres away, in a field hospital, General Hyakutake glared at the phone in his hand.

"We should never have let them take the initiative," Hyakutake said to Maj-Gen Reichner, who had the other stretcher with extensive but cosmetic burns. He switched lines. "Begin the attack. Destroy everything. Hold nothing back. Nerv burns."

Four point one kilometres away, Kaworu and the women ran, as VTOLs swooped into strafing runs, their bullets pinging off his AT Field as flames and clouds of poisonous gas blossomed around them. They made it into the trans-Geofront depot and sprinted along a walkway of orange light twenty centimetres above the electrified tram lines, until the Geofront came into view, and then they leapt into space. Light coruscated around them, slowing their fall.

Holograms of five monoliths appeared around them.

"What are you doing?!" demanded 01.

"Making a choice. I'm the Angel of Free Will. Remember?"

"Tabris! You dare betray us now?!"

Kaworu considered this.

"My name," he said quietly, "is Kaworu. Goodbye, Father."

There was a crackle of orange light. Seele's secret telco array fizzled and sparked, and the monoliths winked out of existence.

"You have even more explaining to do," said Misato, "but later." She looked upward.

Pieces of the armour plating above them were blowing inward, one by one; they had withstood Angelic blasts, but not tons of shaped charges placed along fracture lines in access shafts. The weapons and support towers crashed down into the Geofront; in their wake came explosive, incendiary, and gas shells, VTOL gunships, and soldiers with abseil lines and gas masks. Two Jet Alone units winched down.

"We'll have to get you both into Eva, immediately," Misato said, focusing on the JAs. "Will you be able to pilot?"

"Um, no?" said Asuka.

"Maybe," said Kaworu.

"My synch rate was zero last time; why would that have changed?"

"I can't think of any reason, but you're getting in the plug anyway," Misato said. "It's not like there's anywhere safer for you. Kaworu, why only maybe?"

"Unit-00 would go berserk because of Seed conflict. Units-01 and -02 have imprints that don't like me, not if Yui knows how betrayed Shinji feels. After Chitose copied her S2 organ onto Unit-01, I doubt you even could erase that imprint. Unit-02 would be a safer bet, if you were willing to format the imprint and leave Asuka out. I could use my own S2 organ to help it; it wouldn't need the power cable, which I know the UNTMF will target."

Misato looked around. Paratroopers had jumped from the other ingresses, free-fallen most of the way, and were already attacking HQ; they were going to have to fight their way through them. "We don't have time for that. If they get to Shinji before we do, he's dead. You'll escort us to Unit-02, Asuka will get in, then you'll take me to Central Dogma, we'll find him on the security system, and you'll get him to Unit-01. If neither of them can pilot, you can swap into Unit-02 and I'll have Ritz format the imprint."

"In that case," Kaworu said to Asuka, "I have a message for you. From your mother."

Asuka's eyes widened, then narrowed. "No."

"It's relevant to synchronisation. It will help."

"I don't care."

"You're making a mistake."

"It's mine to make."

"You should listen, Asuka," said Misato.

"When you've experienced a tenth of what happened to me, then you can talk."

Misato and Kaworu frowned, but neither said anything.

…

Slightly under seven thousand kilometres away, a fuel tanker disengaged from a long-range fighter plane. The pilots tapped their radios in acknowledgement and flew their separate ways.

Chitose yawned and uncurled from her seat, partly rested, and watched with interest as the other plane flew away. Her irises were both red; she'd taken out her other lens for her nap, and thrown it away. "Did we just have a mid-air refuelling? Bother; I've wanted to see one of those for years."

"I figured you needed your rest," Kaji said. "You're the muscle here. You need your strength." He reached down and retrieved a box of rations, and handed them back to her.

"Mmph. I guess. How long until we get there?" Chitose sat the rations in her lap, pressed her face to the window, and peered out at the land passing below.

"Do you even know where 'there' is?"

"I thought you knew that?"

Kaji stretched a kink in his neck. "I've been calling in and creating new favours for the past twelve hours. Flight controllers not reporting us, friends telling me about movements, refuelling, that sort of thing. You owe me massively for this."

"I suppose so. But you know where Kihl is?"

"Yeah. A country house in Germany. I have the GPS, but we'll know it when we see it."

"Because it's so grand?"

"Because he has an Eva guarding it. Think you can fight that?"

Chitose opened the ration box. It was the kind of food that one can put away for years and eat at a moment's notice, plus a very necessary water bottle. Nephilim theoretically could survive without eating, if they didn't mind being permanently sleepy, but they needed more energy to fight at full strength, and they couldn't synthesise their own water or vitamins. "Evas' S2 organs are larger than I am. Size does matter, you know."

"That's what she said."

"Hmm? Has Dr Akagi been talking to you about S2 theory? I've asked her, but she never tells me anything about it."

"Never mind. Do you have any cute tricks you could use?"

"None that's likely to work. You know the eighteenth Angel? Even if I'd gone all-out, Kaworu and I together still couldn't have beaten it head-on. An Eva has an even stronger AT Field, plus it's attached to a giant mecha body."

"So what's your plan?"

"Sneak past the Eva and kill Kihl. He's the leader of Seele, and the rest of the Committee mistrusts each other. Without him, they'll fall apart. I hope."

"They should. That's another favour or ten."

"Hmm?"

"I'll get us there and sort out the aftermath. You just worry about Kihl."

"I'm more worried about Kaworu's brothers."

Kaji blinked. "His … brothers."

"Genetic twins, I think? Clones of him. Seele made them of both of us when we developed AT Fields, since they then knew that our genes coded for viable S2 organs. I think one of them piloted Unit-04, you know, against the fifteenth Angel, in America, and they gave Kaworu the legs from another after the seventeenth, with some HGH so they'd fit him. Anyway, Kihl uses them as bodyguards. I assume they euthanised all of my clones when I rebelled – they were all lobotomised, but even so I can't picture Kihl taking that risk – but he still has the Kaworim. I can take them one-on-one, they're younger and weaker than us and they're stupid and predictable, but Kihl knows this and has more than one. And it might be awkward marrying Kaworu after killing a whole lot of his genetic sons."

Kaji shook his head. "You have issues, you know that?"

"How so?"

"How many people have you killed in your life?"

She thought. "It was my attack that destroyed Berlin, so everyone there probably counts, although to be fair I was Absolutely Terrified at the time, and I didn't know what it would do. I was acting on instinct. That's easily the largest one, so probably a million or so."

"Forget that one. Where you knew what you were doing."

"Hmm. The next time was at the Himalayas. I was being kept prisoner there, although they pretended it was for my own good. After that, there was Mrs Bauer, and her henchmen, and since then there've been a few would-be abductors and one civilian man who tried to attack me at night. I'm not sure what specifically he wanted. Then Mr Ikari and the Section Two men, and a few platoons' worth of soldiers escaping the city. And the city, obviously. I panicked with the civilian, but the others were self-defence. If Seele got me again, they would have lobotomised or killed me. It's not possible to imprison a Naphil, not after she realises she doesn't have to do what you tell her. I don't see any moral difference between higher brain death and medical death."

"I see," said Kaji. "You could have thrown Bauer and Ikari and their goons away without killing them. You're pretty much indestructible without an opposing AT Field."

"One of the men who tried to abduct me pumped halothane into my apartment at night. AT Fields don't stop gas. Well, they can, if you concentrate, but not when you're asleep, and they can't filter out oxygen so you eventually pass out. The dosage was too low and I woke up on the way to the airport, and I bought a gas alarm after that, but if I'd let him live, he or someone like him would have tried something else, and eventually figured out something I can't counter. He could as easily have used poison. I don't murder people just because it's easier than thinking of a peaceful solution, Special Agent Kaji. I know I'm desensitised, but after what I had to endure in the Himalayas for all those years, it's really, really hard to be sympathetic toward any of Seele's people. Even Kaworu-chan, sometimes."

Kaji could have pressed this, but she obviously wasn't going to feel guilty either way. "What about those N2 mines you just set off in Tokyo-3? The city wasn't evacuated. That must have killed at least tens of thousands of civilians."

"You were the one who asked for a distraction. If I hadn't, they would have shot us down."

"You can't call that self-defence. Almost none of those people was threatening you."

"Is that a legal definition? I took the only course of action which wouldn't result in my death."

"You don't see the distinction?"

"I don't care about the distinction. I want to live; if the law says I can't, I won't obey the law. Besides, the sailors on the _Over the Rainbow_ weren't threatening you, and you could have warned them about the bombs so they could evacuate."

"I know. I could have. And it would have blown my cover and got us all killed."

"So, you let … I think there were a few thousand? people on that ship die, to save yourself, Misato, and me? And we're all still probably going to die very soon anyway?"

"Would you have done differently?"

"Of course not. But I thought you were trying to say that killing people is bad?"

"There's a difference between killing people and letting them die."

"Is this another legal opinion?"

"You know what," said Kaji, "let's talk about something else. Anything else. If we make it out of here alive, what will you do with the rest of your life?"

"I'd like to travel. See the marsupials in Australia, and the auroras, and the deserts, and the ruined cities, and the thriving ones. I think I'd like to be an engineer when I grow up. Or a scientist. Why? What will you do?"

Kaji thought about Misato. "Stop running," he said.

…

Slightly over seven thousand kilometres away, bombs rained down on the great pyramid of Nerv HQ. Inside Central Dogma, alerts covered every wall; sirens blared.

"Report!" said Fuyutsuki.

"Our radar's not responding," Maya said, trying to reclaim the systems and failing. "Our missiles can't lock onto anything. I can't control them manually, either; they're jamming those frequencies."

"They're coming in through the holes the Fourth and Fifth Children made earlier," Makoto said. He watched a monitor show a platoon hopping in, before one soldier glanced directly at the camera and shot it out.

"Section Two's collapsing," said Shigeru. There remained only a few pockets of half-trained employees with small arms and makeshift barricades, all steadily being overwhelmed by innumerable soldiers with grenades and assault rifles and flamethrowers. A Jet Alone had broken into one of the far wings, and was crushing everything in its path; more soldiers flooded in behind it. They had nothing that could even scratch it.

"The automatic systems aren't stopping them," Makoto added. One by one, UNTMF electronic warfare teams disabled their circuits, or infantry blew open doors or destroyed cameras and autoguns with demo charges. They had set up pumps pouring in Bakelite solvent. One system after another went down.

"It's going to stop _us_, in a moment," said Ritsuko, typing security overrides rapid-fire. "They're trying to hack Magi remotely. We're blind to everything outside HQ already. This isn't good."

"Senpai?" Maya asked, panicking, unsure what to do.

There was a moment's lull, then another siren joined the cacophony. Ritsuko glanced up at it, and turned grey.

"Those _psycho__paths__,_" she said. "Maya, save Magi. I have to stop Third Impact." So saying, she turned with a swirl of her coat and left.

"Save …" Maya repeated. The building shook under another particularly large bomb. She sat down at Ritsuko's terminal and took one look at the notifications scrolling across the screen, almost as fast her eye could track. "Oh, no …"

The room shook again, and a wall blew in, followed by a hail of bullets. Fuyutsuki and Shigeru bent under the desks and pulled out sub-machineguns; Makoto found a pistol, all he had trained with. Maya stared.

"Fight or die!" said Shigeru, laying down suppressing fire.

"Wouldn't mind having one of those Angel Children here now, eh, Shigeru?" Makoto joked, taking aim for a more precise shot.

Two RPGs flew through the breach and hit the base of their tower, blowing it in and bending their platform forty degrees. They staggered against the railing, and the computer monitors all went blank. Makoto dropped his gun; a bullet blew out Shigeru's temple, and he tumbled over the railing.

"Fall back!" cried Fuyutsuki, firing into the breach; another RPG came out of it, blasting a hole in the main screen, and was followed by men with ballistic shields or assault rifles.

There were two gentle clinks from among the soldiers, followed by two explosions and a rattle of gunfire, and they fell dead. Misato walked over them, traded out her empty magazine for one of theirs, and waved up to the bridge crew. Kaworu floated behind her, AT light shining around him; he motioned, and one soldier's combined gas mask and radio headset rose and fixed around his head.

"We're clear," she said. "Maya – anyone – I need to know where Shinji is, now!"

"I can't!" Maya called back. "Magi's locking me out. And half the cameras are gone. And – argh!"

Misato huffed. "Kaworu, it's all up to you, then. Find Shinji, and get him into his Eva. If Asuka doesn't manage to synchronise, we're still going to need someone to deal with those damn JAs, fast." She looked back to the bridge crew. "Where's Ritz?"

Several hundred metres below, Ritsuko ran into Adam's vault. In a locked cabinet was something which had looked like a human kidney but half a metre across, and which now looked like a plate of bloody mashed potatoes. In the middle of the room was Adam, in His Bakelite prison. There were fine cracks all across it, and they were spreading, fast.

"The filtration system," she murmured, staring at it. She had used it to modify Lilithian LCL to make a sedative, to keep Adam dormant. When Kaji first brought it here, she'd assumed that Seele had installed a backdoor in case she ever tried to reverse-engineer it, and so had left it alone; she'd never thought they might set it off just to keep her off-balance. Still, there was only one chance. She had to synthesise a replacement, sometime in the half hour or so they had before He regenerated too much to stop.

She flipped open her laptop and got to work.

…

In abstract space, ten monoliths were illuminated against a dark room. 04 and 11 were still absent.

"What is the meaning of this?!" demanded 02. "Sabotaging Adam's containment? The Angels are undone, the Scenario achieved! Why would you risk everything like this?!"

"The first stage of the Scenario is achieved," 01 corrected. "With possession of Adam, Ritsuko Akagi could reproduce human S2 organs and threaten the second." 09 went dark. "Without suitable containment, she will have no choice but to surrender Him to us."

07 went dark.

"The second stage? What are you talking about?"

10 went dark; so did 06 a moment later.

"Human Instrumentality. Seele's purpose was the defeat of the Angels, and you have fulfilled that purpose. You are therefore no longer necessary."

02 went dark. The remaining five monoliths morphed into holograms of men in white, red, blue, green, and yellow.

"And now, gentlemen," Kihl said, "the hour of our Instrumentality is at hand. Your data and biological materials should be arriving presently. Our operations shall begin as soon as Nerv is demolished."

…

In Nerv's Eva cages, Asuka sat in her plug, her A-10 connectors in her hand. They were all that lay between her and her … mother.

"This is insane," she said. "_You're_ insane. Why am I even considering this?" There was no response. "Of course, I know why. It's that, or the UNTMF kills me. Them or you, does it really matter? I won't be any deader." She sighed. "You really messed me up, you know that? This has been eating me alive for years." No response. "Why did you have to go and do it? If you hadn't done whatever you did to become an 'imprint', would I even be here right now? I couldn't have piloted. Would I just be a normal girl? Would I ever have come here? Would I ever have met … any of these people? Would I be anything like who I am? … Does that mean that you're still a part of me? But then, wouldn't that mean everyone is? I wouldn't be who I am if I'd never met … well, yeah. Is he a part of me? What does that make me, then? Just the sum of everyone I've ever met and cared … and thought was maybe okay? If I am, why am I so scared of dying? Does that mean I don't want them to die? But if they're also just the sum of everyone they've met … what even is humankind?

"Does it even matter? I guess I'm just putting this off, talking a whole lot of philosophical crap to avoid letting you back near my head. You have a lot to answer for, _Mutter_. And if you were still alive … what would it even be like? Shinji and his father?" She sighed again. "Well, I guess I need to try, or they're both dead too. But he owes me for this." And she put on her A-10 connectors.

Nothing happened.

"Oh, don't tell me. _Mutter_, you worked for me before. We can talk about this later, but I need you to move. Move. _I said move!_ I know you're in there. Stop screwing around, stop _dragging me down_ at every turn, and _move_ for me!"

Nothing happened.

"Well, fine. Everything else is your fault, why not this, too? Why not ruin my entire life, from useless start to disappointing finish? God, imagine what would have happened if you hadn't died, if I'd had you trying to _help_ me with other things, like dating. I'd be single at twenty-five."

Nothing happened.

"So that's it? Everything was pointless all along? Just a great long waste of time that never went anywhere, until I finally get pulled out of this soup can by a demo team, like some retarded rabbit? All the Angels we killed before now, none of that matters? Graduating from university at thirteen, all the work I had to put in for that, wasted? Spending nine years training to pilot this, to pilot _you_, but it's not going to make a difference because you're just going to sit there and do nothing?!"

Nothing happened.

Asuka hit the controls, her eyes itching. "Please. I don't want to die. Help me. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Help me."

Unit-02's four eyes lit up.

Fifty metres away, Kaworu floated back from a Jet Alone, dancing out of range of a haymaker. He was supposed to be finding Shinji, but it wouldn't matter if the soldiers got to the cages and dynamited all the entry plugs first. He'd blasted the JA again and again, pitted its armour and denatured or driven back its support, but he wasn't strong enough to take it down single-handed. The thing was as tall as an Eva and much heavier, and even if it didn't have an AT Field, it was covered in high-tech superalloy/ceramic armour plates thick enough to dissipate his attacks. He could deflect the bullets from its pallet rifle, barely, but when it tried to stomp him, he could do nothing but run.

Unit-02 punched through a wall, seized the JA's gun, spun it round, and opened fire. Its armour dented but held; it threw a punch in return. Asuka caught its fist.

"I've _missed_ this," she said, and her mouth split into a grin. "Smarmy, find the Idiot. I got this."

She ducked another punch, then twisted under its arm and flipped it over her shoulder; the ground shook with the impact. She snapped a control rod off its head and bludgeoned it in the face. It hit her in the stomach; she whoofed, then pinned the arm, tore off its chest plating, and pulled its nuclear reactor out of its torso. She threw it down the hallway it had torn through HQ; it fell apart, steaming with heavy water and blobs of plutonium. The JA went still.

"Hey, everyone? Keep away from whatever's just north of the cages, it's full of radioactive crap."

She turned and bounded down the hallways of Nerv, scattering enemy soldiers, firing the Jet Alone's gun in bursts, trying not to hit too many of the few remaining Nerv people. The UNTMF troops took the hint and fell back behind their second JA. This one took out her power cable with a lucky ricochet; she beat it to death with its own leg.

She burst out of the wrecked pyramid, into the Geofront. It was nighttime now, dark but for the glow of her eyes and AT Field, and the muzzle flashes of field guns, MRLs, tanks, and helicopter gunships, all firing at her. She laughed gleefully and charged them. Orange light sparkled and crashed around her, turning missiles and bombs aside, tearing machinery to twisted scraps of metal, giving her the power to throw a tank and knock a VTOL out of the sky. The UNTMF broke and fled.

"Ah, jeez," she said, noticing that her power was down to 2:44. "Can I get another cable here?"

The surviving bridge crew had relocated from their usual position in Central Dogma to a row of computers at ground level, some of the only equipment that had survived the UNTMF attack. Makoto scanned their inventories. "They destroyed everything they could get at, but there's one in depot 4-B. I'll send it up." He pressed a button. "I said, I'll send it up. Um. It's not doing anything."

"I'm sorry!" Maya said, running every security countermeasure she could think of, but she wasn't Ritsuko. Magi wasn't responding. "And the power systems are going. I can't."

"Fine," said Asuka, "I can still … well. Those would have been _really fucking useful_ about fifteen Angels ago. Smarmy? Forget the Idiot and get out here. We have a situation."

She looked up at the gaps in the Geofront armour, where two gliders descended, laden with Units-04 and -05, yellow and green twins of Unit-02. In their arms they carried double-headed Progressive Halberds; on their shoulders rode boys with grey hair and vacant red eyes.

Kaworu floated out of HQ and looked up. His eyes glowed dimly.

"Asuka," he said, speaking very quickly. "I'm not going to be coherent after they get close. The boys can project AT Fields and fly; they're individually weak, but they will swarm you. They're mostly distractions. Leave them to me, focus on the Evas. Their pilots are using their own S2 organs to resonate with their Evas'; they won't run out of power, and they will regenerate, even if you destroy their cores. You need to smash the entry plugs. The pilots look human, but aren't, not any more. Don't hold back, not even for a – _raargh!_"

He shot upward, and the four clones dropped toward him. His Field clashed with two clones' combined; the other two flanked him and blasted him out of the sky. Asuka covered him and swatted one clone like a mosquito, then a prog halberd sliced a shoulder pylon off: Unit-04 was on her. She grabbed the shaft and flipped the Eva over her shoulder, into the path of Unit-03's blade; Unit-03 stopped short clumsily, giving her time to knee Unit-04 hard in the back and seize its weapon. She parried Unit-03's follow-through, and the Kaworim zapped her from behind.

They fought dirty. They circled around opposite the Evas to get behind her; when she turned to swat them away, the Evas would attack. When Kaworu recovered from their first attack, they swarmed him again; she left them to it, buried her weapon into Unit-04's head, and caught -03's halberd by the shaft. She crouched and emptied her shoulder spike cannons into its chest. Unit-04 pulled the blade out and swung it back at her; she threw it and dodged another slash by -03. She caught its wrist, bent it over her knee, and tore out its entry plug.

"_Kill him!_" Kaworu screamed into her headset. She hesitated for second; Unit-04 got back to its feet and shoved her from behind. She went sprawling; -04 caught the plug and stuck it back into -03.

Asuka swore, rolled to her feet, and charged. She leapt over -04's attack, under -03's, pulled a spike from its chestplate, and shoved it through its sternum, into the entry plug. Then she pivoted, bashed -04 in the back of the head, pulled out its plug and crushed it in her hand. The clones hesitated; she leapt at them and twirled in mid-air, splattering them across her shin.

She panted, her eyes shining. "Yeah! Suck it!"

"Thank you," said Kaworu, his eyes returning to normal.

"Hey, that wasn't so hard. So. What now."

"The second wave. They're not going to give us time to regroup."

He pointed upward. Visible in the light from the burning wreckage all around was a second wave of gliders with mass-produced Evas. This time there were five of them: white, grey, black, pink, and brown. Each had two more clones on their shoulders.

"… Okay, but this time, I know how to fight them," said Asuka. "We stick together, back to back. I cover you from the Evas, you cover me from the –"

A tone sounded, and her Eva slumped. She saw the timer. 0:00.

"No. No, no. No no no no no no no no no –"

With glacial slowness, her Eva's balance shifted. Kaworu dodged out of the way as it toppled backward and crashed to the ground. Lying on its back, the plug couldn't eject: she was trapped.

"No! Move! Move! Dammit, move!"

Kaworu dropped to her level and threw his Field at the Eva, trying to roll it off its back so she could eject, but it was too heavy. He strained until he felt the clones' Fields boring into the edges of his mind, then turned and fled back to HQ.

"Kaworu? Kaworu! Get back here! Help me! Someone! Anyone!"

Kaworu zoomed through the burning halls of Nerv, up and down escalators and stairwells, until he found Shinji and Rei. They were lying on their backs in an abandoned store room, him with his head in her lap.

"Shinji," Kaworu said, landing. "We need you."

Shinji's eyes flicked to him, then back to staring at the ceiling. "Go away, Nagisa."

Kaworu flinched. "Shinji, there are five –"

"Go _away_, Nagisa."

"Shinji, listen to me."

"You lied. Leave me alone."

Kaworu pulled at his wrist to drag him to his feet; Shinji moved with it and punched him in the face. Kaworu rolled with it but didn't block.

"I said leave me alone!"

Rei folded an arm around Shinji and stared at Kaworu, not giving him anything.

"Asuka's in danger. Only you can save her."

"You've been lying to me ever since we met. Why should I believe anything you say?"

"The other Evas will kill her. Please. Come with me. I can show you the feeds if you follow me."

Shinji turned and walked away. Rei's gaze lingered for a moment longer, before she walked with him.

Kaworu stared, searching for something to say, when his headset crackled. It was Dr Akagi. "Kaworu. Have you read the Dead Sea Scrolls? The originals?"

Shinji wouldn't pilot. Kaworu shook his head and set off for the cages. If Chitose could make Unit-01 move that time, he had a chance, although unlike her, he did have the handicap that Yui knew he liked the girl who murdered her husband, enough to call her 'treasure'. "Yes, or parts of them. What specifically?"

"I'm trying to reverse-engineer an Adamite sedative from scratch, and the stochastic search isn't working. It might be luck, or maybe there's just no replacement I could make in time, but maybe my theory's wrong. Is there anything else from the Scrolls that Seele lied about when they told me?"

Her computer was running through simulations of a million candidate molecules which her heuristics said could maybe work and which she could hope to manufacture in time, before checking in more detail to see whether they would actually work. So far it had gone through over four hundred thousand. All of them were failures.

"I didn't know that they lied about anything at all. What makes you think they did?"

"The number of Angels. They said there would be eighteen, based on how long Adam was active during Second Impact, but there've only been seventeen proper ones, the third through eighteenth plus the virus one. Why would they attack us before we'd finished with them? It'd risk Third Impact."

"There are eighteen. The last is me and Chitose."

"No, you're Nephilim, not Angels. Or an Angel."

"We share Adam's soul. We are an Angel. When one of us dies, the other shall take full control of that soul and become the eighteenth and final true Angel."

Ritsuko shook her head. "Souls don't actually exist, Kaworu, they're metaphysical abstractions invented by civilisations four thousand years too primitive for real neuroscience. Even if they do somehow exist, they don't affect the material world. If they did, people wouldn't lose their minds from Alzheimer's or strokes or lobotomies."

"Is this really the time to argue theology?"

"Ugh. The line about Adam releasing eighteen souls is a mistranslation anyway. The correct version is eighteen lives, meaning eighteen embryos. You were cloned after Second Impact; you weren't part of the germination."

"A soul is a life."

Ritsuko reached for her packet of cigarettes. It was empty. "So, in short, you're saying you have no useful information to give me."

"I cannot answer the question you asked. How urgent is it?"

Ritsuko glanced at Adam. The Bakelite was slowly being pushed out of the little box, as He stirred. "On a scale from zero to ten? Ten. We have fifteen minutes before the end of the world."

"I have time," said Kaworu, alighting in Unit-01's cage. The plug was waiting for Shinji, but it would accept another pilot. He climbed inside and hit the button to initiate contact. LCL flooded the chamber. "Yui? My name is Nagisa Kaworu. I … I didn't betray him. I had to! Major Katsuragi's killed every Angel she's found, ever since –"

He hit eject, and sprinted out of the cages. The angry Eva roared, and tore free of its restraints. Armour plates flaked off its jaw and both biceps.

The alarms went off in Central Dogma again. Misato's eyes widened. "Kaworu, what the hell?!"

"It was a calculated risk," he said, putting as much distance between it and himself as possible, heading down narrow corridors it couldn't follow through.

"What did your calculation say to do if the unstoppable Angelic death machine went completely out of control?! My God, you're as bad as Ritsuko."

Unit-01 smashed its way out of the cages, then began walking through HQ, searching.

"Major?" Makoto asked. "Was there ever a plan for if Unit-01 went rogue?"

"Yes," she said. "Have Units-02 and -03 take it down."

He considered this. One was out of power, and the other was blown to atoms and scattered across the Antarctic seabed.

"Was there ever a backup plan?"

"Can you send it a command to go outside and fight the MP Evas for us?"

Makoto obeyed, and checked Unit-01 on their cameras. It was still tearing the base apart.

"Someone," Misato ordered, "find where the hell Shinji is, and _get h__i__m to __Unit-01_. For the love of God, hurry! He's our only chance!"

Asuka bashed at her controls. "Move! God damn you, move! What was the point of letting me synchronise if you're just going to lie down and die now! Why can't you be like Unit-01? That one went berserk in its first battle, and then there was that bullcrap it did with the Weird Girl! Why won't you help me?!"

"Soryu," Kaworu said, looking for a suitable weapon now that he was a reasonable distance from Unit-01. "Your mother – listen to her, now!"

"What?! No, I – I can't!"

"Strength doesn't mean that nothing affects you," he said, quietly. "It means that you survive, no matter what."

"I …"

The five Evas landed around her.

Asuka was crying now, scrunching her eyes shut and curling into a ball. "No – not in my head – not now, don't talk to me, don't tell me to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, don't say it, I don't want –"

The Evas converged on her. The pink one, which had landed closest, stabbed its hand into her gut, reaching for the plug.

_I love you_

_My little Asuka_

_Live_

Asuka's eyes flicked open.

"You … you're the part that went missing," she breathed.

In the smouldering wreckage of Central Dogma, Makoto's monitor beeped. He tabbed over to Asuka's synchrograph. His mouth dropped open.

An opaque orange screen rolled over her and through the offending hand, slicing it off at the wrist. She pressed her hand over the wound, and it spat the hand out and roughly stitched itself closed. She rolled to her feet.

"You have been watching over me."

She dived at the pink Eva, flipped it, snapped its back over her knee, and stabbed her hand through its plug. Its two clones leapt off and blasted at her; their attacks splashed off her AT Field, now bright enough to obscure her for a moment.

"Protecting me."

The black and grey Evas tackled her and pinned her arms. The brown brought its glaive down in a vicious vertical swipe; she kicked the black off, used the recoil to roll out of the way, and grabbed the grey as a shield against the white's follow-through. She clapped her hands on the grey's shoulders, squishing its clone passengers, and brought her knee up and into its plug.

"All this time!"

She pivoted into the brown's attack and kicked the white's chest, then threw the brown over her shoulder and stomped its plug like an egg. Two clones raised their hands to blast her from behind; Kaworu flew out of nowhere with a flamethrower and torched them.

"_Mama!_"

She flipped the white's weapon out of its grip and skewered it, then leapt on the black, tore its chestplate off, and ripped its plug out the front and crushed it. She rolled to her feet and raised her hands; a pulse of orange swatted the last clones out of the air.

She panted, her smile no longer one of fury but of elation, her heart lighter than it had been since she first learnt to talk.

"Alright," she said. "The enemies are dead, our base is secured, and _Asuka is back_. Now, who is going to tell me what's going on? Where's my support this time? Don't tell me the Commander's forbidden them from piloting again."

"No," said Misato, "Rei's been lobotomised, Mogami also turned out to be a Nephilim, and she killed the Commander so Shinji's sulking somewhere."

Asuka's euphoria faded in record time. "What."

"And the other Nephilim is with you."

"Naphil," Kaworu corrected, perching on Asuka's shoulder and throwing his flamethrower away. The Eva's AT Field made him uneasy, but, being a machine, it didn't have strong emotions and couldn't really evoke them in him.

"You _wiped_ the First's _brain?_ Just before a fight? Whose brilliant idea was that?"

"The Commander's, and yes, I said the same thing."

Asuka pinched the bridge of her nose. "And the Weird Girl's a Naphil? Like, with the same powers as Smarmy?"

"Apparently."

"She specifically told me she wasn't!"

"She's a crafty one, isn't she?" Kaworu said sardonically.

Asuka fumed. "She told me you had Angel genes, although she forgot to mention you actually had powers. Why would she tell me that but not about herself?"

"We wanted separation of information," he said. "If one of our covers was blown, the other would still be fine. She went out of her way making her synch ratio look random, even though it meant she couldn't pilot as well; I think she mimicked Shinji's progression. Kaji stole that data months earlier. I helped her by sticking to round numbers, so you'd think we were using different methods to synchronise. Seele considered telling Nerv about her, in the hopes that you would classify her as an Angel and send the Evas, but if they did, then she would tell you about me. Mutually assured destruction. I suppose she guessed that you wouldn't tell anyone, Pilot Soryu, and she wanted to be in your good books."

"Whose side is she on? Why'd she kill old man Ikari; where is she now?"

"Ours, mostly," Kaworu said. "She despises Seele, and wishes to protect all of us. She killed the Commander because he thought he would buy enough time for his Scenario by handing her over. I expect she's gone to – persuade – Seele to call off the attack."

Asuka ruminated for a moment, then looked up. "Oh, hell. Can't they give us a break?"

The third wave of Evas was gliding down. This time there were sixteen, each with the upper and lower halves painted different colours.

"Being surrounded sucks," she said, and fell back into the pyramid. "Do you have any ideas about this? Misato?"

"Yes," said Misato, "you should grab – wait, where did Unit-01 go?"

Makoto tabbed through the few remaining camera feeds.

"I don't believe this. How can we _lose_ an _Eva_ in our _own base?_"

"It's a really large base," he said helplessly. "There's still pockets of poison gas around the edges, and most of the rest has been blown up or is radioactive and on fire."

She ran a hand through her hair. "For all intents and purposes, it's an Angel now. _Find it_. Ibuki, it should register on the seismograph."

"That's not responding," she said, typing frantically.

"They bothered to hack the seismograph? Do you have anything at all left?"

Maya just stared at her monitor. Misato read it over her shoulder: SELF-DESTRUCT INITIATED: 1:53. She reached for her phone. "Ritz? Maya's lost Magi and the base is going to self-destruct in less than two minutes."

Ritsuko watched her simulation finish. One million molecules attempted: one million failures. Time for drastic measures. "This is why we can't have nice things. I'll be right up." She hung up, hit the elevator, and called another number.

Rei's phone rang. She glanced down at it, then at Shinji. He said nothing. She would have left it, but it was Doctor Akagi. She owed Akagi an explanation, if nothing else.

"Rei. Or Yui or whoever you are now. Can you pilot?"

"Yes."

"Wait … Rei? What – how?"

"But I won't. I need to stay with Shinji."

"You're with – get to the damn cages, and bring him with you! We needed you there an hour ago!"

"No."

"I don't – for pity's sake, Rei, out of your entire life, now is literally the very worst time you could have picked to not do what I say!"

"He needs me."

"You know what else Shinji needs? A world without a revived Adam. Leave him if he won't come, but you have ten minutes to get the Lance of Longinus out of Lilith and into Adam, or He'll germinate again, and we'll have to fight this entire war all over again in another fifteen years. If any of us survives for another fifteen minutes."

She hung up just as her elevator arrived at Central Dogma. Maya spun, wild-eyed, as the doors opened.

"We have ten seconds to self-destruct! Senpai, I – I need to say that I l–"

Ritsuko calmly walked past her, yanked out the Ethernet cable, and sent an interrupt signal. The countdown paused. She hit two more keys, and Magi rebooted.

"…"

"That'll do, Maya," said Ritsuko. "That'll do. Find a cot somewhere and get some sleep. That's an order. I don't want you self-destructing anything else on me. Now, where were we?"

She brought up the security feeds, showing the sixteen enemy Evas landing in the Geofront and heading for HQ, the piles of destroyed military hardware and Eva gear, and dead soldiers and Nerv personnel.

"I leave you alone for half an hour … where's Unit-01?"

Misato did a palms-up. Ritsuko stared in disbelief, then shook her head and returned to her computer.

"Asuka, your battery pack is exhausted. Why are you still alive?"

"I finally worked out how to synchronise properly," she said. "No thanks to all of you."

Rituko checked Asuka's status and raised an eyebrow. Unit-02 had developed an S2 organ of its own, copied from the MP Eva's pilot. Well, Yui hadn't been Nerv's only genius. "So I see. Try not to get hit; that's high enough to give you sympathetic injuries."

"Sure, I'll just kill all these fresh Evas and clones without taking a scratch. How hard could it be?"

"Good, you do that. Maya …" She glanced around, but the tech had already left. The only people still there were Misato, Fuyutsuki, Makoto, and a handful of assorted technicians she didn't recognise, who'd fled from the UNTMF forces and hadn't felt like leaving. "Where's Aoba?"

"Dead," Makoto said shortly, pointing to his friend's body.

"Will _someone_ turn that racket off?" Ritsuko asked. Most of the alarms had broken when the UNTMF had fired rockets at them, but one was still ringing. The bridge crew hadn't even noticed, putting it down to tinnitus; Makoto looked around and shut it down. "Actually, Asuka, belay that. I need you down in Terminal Dogma, now."

"What, like, now now?" Asuka asked, dodging a swing from a green-and-blue Eva. Inside HQ's narrow halls, they could only attack her two at a time, but she couldn't get behind them to smash their plugs without exposing herself.

"_Yes_, now now."

"Ritz?" said Misato, miffed. "I'm in charge of battles, not you."

"If we don't get an Eva down there within the next three minutes, we'll all die."

"You might not have noticed," said Asuka, ducking and weaving, "but I'm already tapped out on the not dying front. Besides, we've all been about to die for, like, the past hour; what's so special about this?"

Ritsuko rolled her eyes and hit the PA. "Shinji, I don't know where you are, but stop wallowing in self-pity and get up here! We need you to pilot Eva."

"Not going to work," said Misato. "For one thing, we still don't know where Unit-01 is."

"Did the soldiers take it, or –?"

"No, it got up and walked away. Makoto, find a forklift and operators and get Asuka a prog knife."

Asuka blocked another attack bare-handed and shoved the second Eva back, but the first Eva fell back in step, keeping her from manoeuvring behind it. They rallied, but then stepped back again, instead of resuming their relentless attack. The six Evas queuing up behind them turned and left; then the vanguard left, walking backward, leaving her be.

"What the heck?" she asked. "Are they running?"

Kaworu, spattered in dead clone, floated down onto her shoulder. "It looks like it."

"But … we weren't even winning this time."

"Shall we follow them?"

"You really, really need to get down to Terminal Dogma," said Ritsuko.

"No," Asuka said stubbornly, and set off after the retreating MP Evas. "We need to know what these things are doing."

Ritsuko ran her hands through her hair and looked for an alternate strategy.

Visibility in the corridor was low from rubble and smoke. Asuka followed the withdrawing Evas along it, until they left the pyramid altogether. Once outside, they turned and ran to the end of the Geofront. The pitch darkness of before had given way to silvery moonlight, which showed the Evas climbing the walls, approaching one hole the UNTMF had blown in.

"They waited until dark to attack," Asuka said. "Maybe they think the moonlight will give us an advantage somehow?"

"How?" asked Kaworu. "We were indoors."

"Do _you_ have any brilliant explanations?"

"Stay alert," Misato ordered. "And stay under cover. They might be pulling out for an N2 attack. I don't know why they haven't tried one already."

"Hang on," Ritsuko said distractedly. "This is a moonless night."

"No it isn't," said Asuka.

"Yes it is."

"No it isn't! Look right there!"

"Look at this moon chart," she said, pulling one up. "It's a new moon now."

"You know that?" Misato asked. "I didn't know you went outside."

"Ha. The Fifth Child mentioned it last night, and some of us actually read the logs of battles."

"That sounds incredibly fascinating," said Asuka, "but I can see moonlight, right there."

The bridge crew considered this.

"I'm going to put this back in for exactly fifteen seconds," Ritsuko said, picking up the Ethernet cable, "and, Hyuga, you are going to ping every remote sensor we have. On my mark. Mark!"

The remaining sirens all went off as one. Red ALERT messages flashed on the less damaged parts of the walls, then flipped to yellow AGGRAVATED ALERT, then turned to blue MAXIMUM ALERT. A message flashed on Ritsuko's screen:

BLUE PATTERN DETECTED

DEPLOY ALL RESERVES

EVACUATE ALL NONCOMBAT PERSONNEL

FINAL ANGEL INBOUND

GOOD LUCK – M, B, C

…

Several hundred metres below, Adam's Bakelite prison cracked, buckled, and shattered. He raised a single claw, and grew, and grew. He wasn't bound by the limitations of mere super-solenoid biochemistry. In fifteen seconds, He had grown from the size of the palm of a human hand to fill the lab and press against the walls; they shuddered and strained, until Unit-00 jammed a pole through Him. He twitched, and fell dormant again. Rei made sure the Lance was secure, and turned to climb the elevator shaft again.

…

"Those stupid, stupid, _stupid_ idiots," Ritsuko said, her vocabulary failing her for once. "Seele's doomed us all because they couldn't count past seventeen. Nagisa, you're not an Angel, and neither is Mogami. You never were, and never will be. You're both human. With some extra genes and super-powered renal systems, but still human. That … this is the eighteenth Angel."

"I always did think the idea of a shared soul sounded rather ad hoc," Kaworu admitted. "And I was never quite certain about whether my and Chitose's clones also counted."

"What are we going to do?" Asuka asked. "If we fight it, those enemy Evas will swoop in after we wear each other down and finish us off. I can barely hold them off now, never mind after another Angel."

"We don't have a choice," said Misato. "If it gets through to either Seed, it's all over. Hopefully, it'll home in on those MP Evas' and clones' AT Fields and fight them instead of us, but we're in a corner. We'll just have to fight it and win."

"Then what's the plan?"

"That'd be a lot easier with information," Misato said. "Ritz, what can you tell me about it?"

"It glows," Ritsuko said shortly. "The UNTMF dynamited almost all of our sensors. I can't even tell you what it looks like."

"Nothing about its speed, abilities, toughness …?"

"You remember the eighth? Angels are biologically plastic while they're still embryos; they look completely different from their final forms and can become more or less anything. Once they decide on a final form and grow into it, they become biologically elastic; they can recover from any damage that doesn't destroy their cores, but they can only make minor modifications. The longer they spend as embryos, the more time they have to find a powerful final form. This one has spent the longest maturing. So it'll be worse than anything else we've fought before."

Asuka and Kaworu considered this.

"Okay, that's reassuring and all," said Asuka, "but I was hoping for something actually usable."

"If you want advice without having any firm data, don't ask a scientist."

"Perhaps I should look at it?" Kaworu suggested.

"Can you?" asked Misato. "Or will that make you freak out and attack it by yourself?"

"At a distance of at least a kilometre, given it's still outside the Geofront? I doubt it. Besides, Absolute Terror only makes beings of comparable power attack each other; if one is much stronger, as the Angel should be, it makes the weaker one flee."

"Okay. But try to keep your own Field down, and don't let it see you if you can."

Kaworu walked through air, toward the shaft of silver Angel light. It was dim, but slowly brightening. He got to within a metre of it. The moment he got under it, he gave a blood-curdling shriek, and shot back toward HQ like a lightning bolt, smashing straight through a wall without slowing.

"Kaworu!" Misato called. "Kaworu!" He gave no response; his radio headset had fallen off. Makoto scanned through the camera feeds, but the impact had apparently knocked out the last of them in that sector. Kaworu was gone. Rubble settled over the hole he'd punched, and then there was silence.

"Well," said Asuka. "That's not good."

"Is there any point at all trying to find him?" Misato asked Makoto.

"We don't even have the manpower to find Unit-01," he said, "we're not going to be able to find a pilot."

"True. Fine. Can you at least tell us anything about the Angel?" she asked Ritsuko instead.

"It was strong enough for him to feel its Field at this distance," Ritsuko said, typing. "And it glows. I'll generate random Angels satisfying that and run some sims. One moment."

She typed in the parameters (Unit-02; success defined as the Angel being destroyed without touching either Seed of Life) and set her program to run a million trials, to get some sort of starting point. From there, she would look for patterns in the successes and hopefully give useful recommendations.

_Simulation complete_

_Time taken: 4.23 s_

_Number of trials: 1000000_

_Number of successes: 0_

_Number of failures: 1000000_

"None," Misato said flatly. "Give me one chance in a million, and I can take on the world, but _nothing?_"

Ritsuko scanned the logs. "If Kaworu can't even look at it, then Asuka can't get through its AT Field, not by herself. Without more Units, we can't even hurt it."

Fuyutsuki cleared his throat. "Katsuragi. Can you get the other Children back in their Evas?"

"I'll definitely try, sir," she said.

"Of course. But will you succeed?"

"…"

"I see," he said. "Ritsuko, are our communications in shape to make a call outside the Geofront?"

"Not even close," she said. "The UNTMF blew our telco towers and cables to the surface, and they still have those jammers running. We wouldn't even be able to talk to Asuka without the IR mode of her radio."

"Then, Major Katsuragi, you're now acting Commander of Nerv." He swapped his assault rifle for a revolver and turned to leave.

"Sir?" said Misato. "Where are you going?"

"To parley for the only other Evas available," he said. "Catapult F is still operational. Prepare it."

Asuka stared at the slowly brightening light. The bridge crew might have muted their mikes while discussing her chances, but she wasn't stupid, she could guess roughly what they were saying. Dying wouldn't be too bad. She'd faced her own mortality time and again before. Still, she'd hoped it wouldn't be like this, with the weight of the world bearing inexorably down on her shoulders until they broke, abandoned by all her friends, knowing that everyone would die and it would be her fault.

She heard stomping. For a moment she thought it was another Jet Alone, and then her heart leapt when she realised it was an Eva: Shinji had finally come for her! Then it came into view, and she realised it was Unit-00. Her heart sank, then bounced back up. Rei was far from her first choice for a wingmate, but still miles better than fighting alone.

"Wonder girl," she said, smiling. "I guess you and I are the only ones stupid enough to still be here."

Rei nodded, and moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with Asuka.

"Honestly, though, I'm glad you came," said Asuka. "I didn't want to die alone." She paused. "Wait, didn't someone say you'd had your brain wiped?"

"I disobeyed orders," Rei whispered.

"You …" Asuka shook her head. "Only you would feel guilty about refusing an order to have your brain fried. You realise that's incredibly neurotic? I bet modern psychiatry doesn't even have a word for how messed up that is."

"If I do not have orders, what do I have?" asked Rei. "Commander Ikari will be upset."

"I thought he was dead? Misato, you said the Weird Girl killed him."

Misato did some mental arithmetic and winced. That had happened about fifteen hours ago, and they hadn't told Rei. She wasn't sure they'd even got around to scrubbing his residue from the cages. She made a mental note to do that before either Rei or Shinji went back there.

"I'm sorry. I would have told you earlier, Rei, but I thought you were gone. You didn't answer your phone, and we couldn't find you."

Rei said nothing.

Misato shot a look at Ritsuko, who did a palms-up. "Speaking of which, try the sims again with two Evas on our side."

Ritsuko tweaked the parameters and ran her program again. _Number of successes: __zero__._

"Does anyone actually know why she was going to have her brain scrubbed?" Asuka asked.

Rituko patted her pocket for a cigarette, but she was still out. "Years ago, Ikari Yui, the Commander's wife and Shinji's mother, volunteered for a brain scan to be uploaded and serve as the core AI for Unit-01. It worked, but we didn't realise until it was too late that it would be fatal for her. We never did get the scan technology safe, although the German branch made it survivable with only severe brain damage. The Commander was inconsolable. They were very much in love; his desire to see her even one more time overwhelmed everything else, to the point of mania.

"She happened to have donated some gametes to science a few years earlier. He ordered me to use them to clone her, spliced with genes from both Seeds. The idea was that we would eventually download Yui's mind into Rei's emptied brain and so resurrect Yui, into an immortal Naphil body. Between the facts that human cloning is a poorly-developed art – thanks _so much_, ethics committees – that I had limited ova to try with that I also had to splice Seed genes into, and that Adamite genes are inimical to the Lilin, so I had to use Lilithian genes to contain _that_, I never had a chance of getting it perfect.

"Rei grew an S2 organ, but it's defective. It didn't develop properly and doesn't work: no limitless energy, no AT Field. With the Naphil technology that Seele's had for a while and which I've recently duplicated, I could fix it and make her as powerful as either of them. The downside would be that Kaworu and Chitose would try to kill her whenever they saw her. With no Commander ordering it, I see no reason to continue."

"Wait, could you do that quickly?" Misato asked, wondering if they could have Rei somehow use her S2 organ to stimulate Unit-00's and give it the same sort of upgrade Chitose had given Unit-01.

"That depends on whether you consider eight hours 'quick'."

"Wait, back up," said Asuka. "She's a clone of the Idiot's _mother_, and they went on a _date?_"

"That's clearly the most important question," said Ritsuko. "And no, she isn't. Cloning is _hard_. Seele may or may not know how to do it reliably, but I don't, so I cheated and used an anonymous sperm donor and a surrogate, to get a biological child rather than clone. She's genetically only his half-sister, modulo the Angelic material."

"She's his _sister_, and they went on a _date?_"

"Half-siblings are as consanguineous as double cousins. You do realise that cousin marriage is legal, don't you?"

"The Japanese have no decency," declared Asuka.

"It's also legal in Germany. If anything, it'd be _more_ legal there in this case, because the age of consent there is fourteen."

Asuka, who had pointed that out to Kaji on and after her last birthday, many times, said nothing.

…

A kilometre above, Fuyutsuki's elevator reached the surface. He looked around, wondering which way the nearest UNTMF officer was, when a sniper left as a rearguard against a second Nerv exfiltration shot him in the gut. He fell to the ground, bleeding out.

…

Five holograms sat around a table set for six.

"A _nineteenth_ Angel?" said Green. "The Scrolls never predicted this, Kihl. What if they've made other mistakes?"

"This is within the Scenario," Kihl answered. "With their Fall from our grace, Tabris and Tamiel are no longer an Angel, but an outcast. This is the true eighteenth Angel."

"The Scrolls never mentioned anything about a Fall," said Blue.

"A deviation at this point could prove fatal," Green pointed out. "We must defer Instrumentality until this has been fully investigated, and Nerv is destroyed."

"And what about the Angel?" asked Yellow. "It's an even more imminent threat to the Scenario."

"Let the rebels and traitors deal with it," said Kihl. "They are still well-equipped for it. After they are done, we shall proceed at our leisure."

…

Down in the Geofront, Rei stared at her hands. "… If the Commander is dead," she said, "then why do I still pilot?"

"Are you stupid? What else are you going to do?" asked Asuka. "Speaking of which, what else _have_ you been doing? I thought you were busy having your brain cooked, but if you weren't?"

"I was comforting Ikari," said Rei.

"Ew," said Asuka, her face shuttering.

"I did not have sexual intercourse with him," Rei clarified.

"Like I care."

"You do."

Asuka killed the broadcast except for her line to Rei. "Look. You want him? You can have him. I meant what I told him. If he wants to date you, that's fine. Congratulations! You win. I'm not going to compete with you for him."

"I wish for him to be happy. He will not be if you are not. He cares for you, too."

"If you want him to be happy, try 'comforting' him again."

"Soryu. Ikari is in love with you, not with me."

"…"

"I believe he always has been."

"What? No, he … if he loves me, then what was he doing last night with you?"

"He wishes for me to be happy too. Most of his attention was occupied by Nagisa. It isn't when he is with you."

"… But if you knew, why did you even ask him?"

Rei thought about this for a while. "Because I wished to be happy with him." She hesitated. She'd spent too much time with the Fifth Child. "I wished to know what that would be like. I am glad that I now know. But he does not love me, not in the way that he does you."

Asuka was silent.

"What will you do?" asked Rei.

"I … how should I know? Are you even sure he is?"

"Yes."

"…"

"Do you love him?" Rei asked, meaning it rhetorically.

"… If you ever, _ever_, tell anyone I said this, I will gut you like a fish," Asuka said, meaning it. "Yes."

"What will you do?" Rei repeated.

"I don't know. What _can_ I do? I can't, I can't tell him." Rei said nothing. "What? It's not that easy. I mean, what if – look, it's easy for you, you don't have any pride. But I do. I can't."

There was a chime, as Ritsuko opened a link.

"Do you mind?" Asuka snarled. "We were having a private conversation."

"Great," said Ritsuko.

"What?"

"I said, the army destroyed most of our Eva equipment. See if you can salvage anything of theirs."

"The stuff which couldn't even break through my AT Field, and you want to try it against the strongest Angel?"

"Would you rather fight it with your bare hands?"

"Urgh, fine," said Asuka, and stomped off, avoiding the patches of Angel light falling through the demolished Geofront armour, by now as bright as daylight.

Ritsuko waited until she was out of earshot of HQ's PA. "By the way," she added, "you could really do with another Eva, couldn't you?"

"Well, duh? Who wouldn't want reinforcements for a fight like this? But we don't have any more."

"Right," said Ritsuko.

Misato gave her a questioning look, as she remotely downloaded Unit-02's black box recorder, which Asuka hadn't thought to disable, and skipped back a few minutes, and replayed it.

"_Look. You want him?_"

"Ritz!" Misato said. "That was personal!"

"You're not seriously saying _that's_ the thing I'm going to Hell for," said Ritsuko.

"At least you had reasons for all the other stuff! Why are you eavesdropping on this?"

"To edit out the parts that won't help," she said, and hit some keys to feed the conversation into the PA to the entire building.

"_Soryu. Ikari is in love with you, not with me._"

Misato gave her a look of deep disgust.

Deep within the great pyramid, Shinji's mouth slowly fell open.

…

A kilometre above, Fuyutsuki coughed frothy blood. This was inconvenient. The light grew brighter than the flame of a welding torch; he looked directly at it, and his eyes burnt out.

According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Adam came to Earth first, and then Lilith, three and a half billion years ago. The Seeds had a safety mechanism, the Lances, to prevent their Fruits from combining. Lilith's should in theory have disabled Her then, and She should have been eternally dormant; however, Hers was by chance destroyed, so Adam's activated instead, ceding Earth to the Lilin. Perhaps this was unjust; but to Fuyutsuki's mind, two hundred thousand years was enough time for humankind to claim Earth as its home.

He was a scientist, but had brushed up on his theology for dealing with Seele. In the stories, first there were God and His Angels. Later, He made Man, who would be the inheritors of Earth. The Angels, in their pride, refused to accept this, considering themselves superior to humans made of mud. They rebelled, led by the brightest in God's choir, and were cast down. It is prophesied that, in the final war, the rebel Angels would be made to submit to Man, and then be destroyed.

Fuyutsuki would have liked to say all of that, but he only had breath for one word: "_Hizamazuke__._" He drew his revolver and fired blind toward the light, until his gun clicked empty and the radiant heat vaporised the city around him.

…

Asuka had done a thorough job of obliterating the attacking forces; after picking through the destroyed VTOLs and MRLs, she found exactly one item which an Angel might not ignore out of hand, a large FAE bomb. She stowed it in her intact shoulder pylon, then picked up two of the MP Evas' glaives, throwing one to Rei.

Ritsuko watched her scanner. "Here it comes," she said. "It's approaching the Geofront."

The light was painfully bright now. Evas had retractable tinted covers for their eyes, much like sunglasses, intended against optical attacks; the pilots activated them, but it was still blinding. The trees and grass inside the Geofront sizzled with heat, wilted, and burst into flame. The girls raised their hands to cover their eyes, but it was still too much, and their armour heated and began to warp. Debris swirled and bounced down into the Geofront with the Angel's approach; scorching air, metal softening and melting, a noise like a hurricane.

"How are we supposed to fight this thing?" Asuka shouted. "I can't even look at it!" Her glaive began to fold in on itself, like a stick of warm butter. Her voice was garbled in Central Dogma: the Angel was giving out enough energy to act as a radio jammer.

"Neutralise its AT Field!"

Ritsuko checked her display. The Angel was giving off interference and her sensors were scrambling, but she could see that its AT phase space was easily larger than the girls' combined. "They can't."

"Then fall back! Get to the pyramid!"

Both girls ran for it; their armour warped and locked around their joints, and they fell to the ground. Rei moaned; Asuka screamed.

"Cut their synch rates!" Misato ordered. "Thirty percent! Rei, Asuka, hang in there!"

…

Shinji ran toward the Eva cages, down one of Nerv's many seemingly pointless corridors, past scorch marks, piles of debris, and bullet holes, and skidded to a stop before Kaworu, who was huddled in a ball on the ground, snivelling.

"K-Kaworu?" Shinji said, astonished: he'd never seen the other boy anything but unruffled.

Kaworu gripped his head tightly and shuddered.

"What are you doing here? We're under attack! They need us!" Shinji said.

Kaworu just shook his head.

Shinji suddenly saw himself as he was on that fateful night, the first time he had seen Eva, but from the his father's perspective. A little boy, weak and afraid, unable to even move until Rei had been sent in. Then he'd stepped up, because he had to protect her.

"Didn't you hear Asuka and Rei crying out just then?" Shinji asked; for some reason the chatter from Central Dogma was broadcasting on the PA. "They're dying! If we don't get out there right now, this was all pointless!"

Kaworu folded in on himself even tighter, and dug his fingers into his head.

Then, Shinji saw himself as he would have been if even the sight of Rei's broken body hadn't moved him to get into the entry plug. He saw his father turn aside, and use her instead, even though it meant almost-certain doom, because the tiniest sliver of a chance is still a chance. He saw her crawl into Unit-01 for a hopeless fight to save the world, and knew what he had to do.

"You're pathetic," he said, his voice perfectly level, stating a fact, not an insult. He kept running.

At the end of the corridor, Unit-01 finally found him. He slowed to a stop, and locked eyes with the great Angelic machine for long moments. Then it knelt, and the entry plug ejected.

…

The alarms blared in Central Dogma, competing with the roar of the Angel's hurricane and the crackle of evaporating masonry. The junior techs had all run for it, although exactly where they thought would be safer, Misato couldn't imagine. She watched the Angel's path on Ritsuko's wireframe screen: it was ploughing straight through the walls and floors of HQ without slowing, vaporising everything in its path from sheer radiant energy. Magi reported one subsystem failing after another.

"It's heading for Lilith," Ritsuko yelled. "We're directly in its way. We've got to evacuate!"

"Where to?" Misato yelled back. "That's game over anyway. If it's getting Her, it's going to have to go through me."

"You're insane," Ritsuko shouted. She turned and ran.

Misato turned to Makoto, the only one left. She could feel the room heating up.

"Thanks, Makoto," she shouted, drowned out by the roaring.

He met her eyes and smiled. "I've always wanted to die beside you," he said, nowhere near audible, "but not today," and with that he sucker-punched her in the face. She staggered; before she could recover, he grabbed her wrist and yanked her along and out through a doorway. He hit the control to slam down the blast door, a moment before the Angel burst through the ceiling of Central Dogma and turned the room to plasma.

The floor vaporised under it; it descended the elevator shaft to Terminal Dogma, melting the walls as it passed, hurricane-force winds swirling around it. With the Lance of Longinus in place, the pull from Adam was drowned out by that from Lilith; the Angel floated straight past Adam's vault, and a moment later, a purple mass slammed into it from above.

Shinji roared, completely blind, and hammered at the Angel with both fists. He felt its AT Field without seeing it; he dug his fingers into it and pulled, but it was stronger than any he'd fought before, too strong for him to neutralise. He struggled with it, pulling it wide enough to stick his heel in, until his Eva absorbed enough heat to scorch. His cries turned from rage to agony, and he pulled back; the Angel reached the bottom of the shaft and began moving laterally, and he slid off its Field and into the pool of LCL covering Terminal Dogma, screaming in pain. The LCL cooled his red-hot armour, turning to steam from his heat and that of the Angel, and funnelled up the twisted shaft. The Angel melted through Heaven's Gate in a second and faced Lilith.

She stood by Her cross. Her lower half had regenerated when Rei had removed the Lance; the weight had pulled the nails through Her hands. The Angel dimmed as it approached, so as not to damage Her, until it was revealed to be just a red sphere: entirely core material, its only attack its immense power output. Lilith's mask of seven eyes fell off, and She turned to face the Angel that was approaching to claim Her Fruit. Her face was that of a mother.

She opened Her mouth to tell it without words that a mother will always protect her children, and then She burst apart into LCL. It fell into the lake below. There was a wave that looked like a ripple, and She was gone.

The Angel quivered in mid-air for long moments, then snapped back to full temperature. It glowed white again, even brighter than before, and air hot enough to melt steel blasted in all directions. It reversed, returning for Unit-01, and another Eva dropped out of the shaft, this one with crinkled red, green, and yellow armour.

"Get the hell away from my partner."

Asuka opened her pylon, pulled out the fuel-air bomb, and threw it. She scooped up Unit-01 and leapt as high as she could, catching the steel cable Rei held; Rei yanked her upward, and the bomb exploded with enough force to bring the ceiling down on the Angel.

"Huh?" Shinji asked, his head spinning.

"Armour was trashed," she said, voice tight with pain, thinking for some reason that he was asking about her colours. "No time to fix it properly. Misato, are you alive?"

"Barely," the Major shouted back, her voice garbled from the Angelic interference. The collapse of Terminal Dogma had caused most of HQ to cave in; Makoto had taken her to a bunker with Ritsuko and Maya, one with a direct connection to one of the Magi. As far as she could tell, they and the pilots were the only people still alive. "Regroup at Adam's vault. It's heading there next. With all three of you, you might be able to break its Field."

Maya had stopped checking the list of non-functioning systems and had instead turned to the much-shorter list of systems which hadn't been completely destroyed. "Senpai, the Magi banks have almost twelve tons of liquid nitrogen left between them. The Magi aren't designed to survive overheating, but this is the final battle, and if we rerouted it …"

Ritsuko did some mental arithmetic. "… Then it would buy them about one point two seconds of time," she estimated.

"Oh," said Maya, disappointed.

"Do it," said Ritsuko. "On Misato's mark. Sorry, Mother." She reached into her pocket. She wasn't sure about it, but desperate times call for desperate measures. She stuck a nicotine patch onto her neck.

Asuka swung on the rope, jumped, and made it into the short corridor before the vault, which was mostly taken up by the Lance of Longinus. She set Shinji back on his feet. Seconds later, Rei tied her cable around a heavy piece of debris, slid down, and joined them. Her armour was mostly melted off, enough to expose her Unit's innards and skeleton; blue fluid seeped out of the holes, and she was stooped, barely able to stand. The downed Evas' armour wasn't shaped for Unit-00; unlike Asuka, she couldn't peel it off and wrap it around herself. Her power cable was long gone, her battery draining.

"Asuka," Shinji gasped, his body still twitching from sympathetic pain. "Before it gets here … I have to. I. Do you know the Hedgehog's Dilemma?"

"That sounds like a Japanese version of Aesop's Fables," she said. "Is this really the time?"

"Yes! When two hedgehogs try to get close, they just end up hurting each other. But if they pull away, they have to be lonely for their entire lives, and that's so much worse. I thought I was like that, I thought we were. But then I saw Kaworu and Chitose fight. They actually, literally can't get close. Compared to that, what excuse do I have? That I'm a coward? What happens for the rest of us that's so bad?"

"Shinji, you're not a –"

"I _am_ a coward," he said. "I run away, and I hate having to pilot. I run from everything. I almost – I like you, Asuka. I like you, as more than a friend, and I wanted you to know that."

"I," said Asuka. "Yeah. Me too. Don't die. And, Shinji? You're not a coward. You came back. That's what counts."

They smiled at each other through their HUDs. Misato took the opening.

"Pilots," she said. "Rei, Asuka, Shinji. This is it. One way or the other, this is the final battle of the War of the Angels. You've fought time and again, no matter the cost, and you've always come through. You've done more than anyone could ever have asked, and I couldn't be prouder of any of you, not if you were my own children. So no matter what else happens, remember, _you are not alone_. Everyone, all three billion humans still alive, are with you right now, everyone who has ever lived, everyone who will live because of your actions, we're all in this together. Here, now, is humankind's last stand, and we are going to show that thing that we will not go gentle into the night. Draw strength from each other, from all the lives you've saved. And then _kick its ass!_"

The wall of the shaft glowed white, then blew outward in the Angel's wake.

They raised their AT Fields and struggled against the Angel's. Shinji tore into it from the middle, with Asuka on his right and Rei on his left, giving everything they could to bring it down.

It held.

Their own combined Fields gave them partial protection from its radiance, but its heat still seeped through. Maya's computer displays of the Evas turned from green to yellow to orange.

"No!" Misato yelled. "No! Keep going! You have to win! Maya!"

Over ten tons of liquid nitrogen at two hundred degrees below zero sprayed down the ruined shaft, buying one precious extra second before it boiled, but the Angel's sheer power was too much. The pilots felt their hands burn and blacken.

A fourth Field bloomed into existence against the Angel. Without vision, Shinji felt rather than saw Kaworu floating above them, his hands outstretched, attacking with every iota of energy even as his body disintegrated. Shinji finally tore through.

He screamed and leapt onto the Angel, knocking it into the shaft's wall. He got three good punches in, digging spiderweb cracks across its core, before a blast of superheated air blew him backward with enough force to tear Unit-01 limb from limb and rip its chest open. Its S2 organ burst apart, and it was still. Rei was there before Unit-01 even hit the opposite wall, and drove both elbows into the Angel, knocking out chunks of red material, before her arms fell off; she headbutted it, before her head melted off, and Unit-00 fell apart. Asuka was last; she pummelled it with everything she had, kicking it when the nerves burnt out of Unit-02's arms, until finally it shattered. The last of its core material, losing the cohesion of its AT Field, turned to red vapour and was gone. The hurricane died down around them, the great heat slowly began to dissipate.

What was left of the three Evas, scorched, eyes gone, most of their armour and limbs melted off, Units-00 and -01 damaged far beyond any repair, lay half-buried in the pile of rubble that used to be Nerv HQ, humanity's last bastion against the Angels.

"We did it," Asuka said at length.

"Yeah," Shinji replied. Misato had once told him that the entry plug was the best-protected part of Eva, as long as you faced the enemy, since it was surrounded by heavily armoured tissue. Apparently she was right.

"When the MP Evas come back, we're going to be completely helpless, aren't we," Asuka said.

"Yeah."

They exchanged smiles, and passed into unconsciousness. Rei smiled, tenderly, and she too shut her eyes. For the first time in her life, she dreamt.

…

Kaji pointed at the German countryside below. "Mogami?"

She leant forward to see and followed his finger. Below was a wide, green estate, very neat and full of well-trimmed trees, hedges, and flowers. An opulent manor stood in its midst. Kaji was pointing past the manor, at the yellow-and-red Eva, lying on its front, with the entry plug still out.

"Here's the plan," he said. "I'll come in low. You eject and AT-blast the plug before it can insert, then fly to the manor and kill Kihl."

"I can't fly," Chitose said.

"What? But I thought …"

"Kaworu can. I can't. It sort of makes up for him not having my capacitance attack, I suppose. I've been trying to work out how he does it for years; I should be able to, I mean he says it's just like treading water, but I've never managed it at all. That advantage was why Seele thought he could beat me in a fight. Well, that, and because he's a boy; our Fields are equally strong, so him being physically stronger does make a difference."

"Okay," said Kaji, "for the record, that's the sort of thing you should tell people in advance."

"I thought Seele told you," she said. "And I didn't think it'd come up."

"You thought they would have volunteered information to me?"

"They told me and Kaworu everything."

"Yes, because you're both Nephilim and had to know about yourselves to be effective. I didn't."

"Well, what do we do? If there's a clone in that plug and I eject at a safe height, it'll be able to insert before I'm close enough to hit it. It'll take even longer if we land and walk to it. Oh, no, I think we've been overthinking this. I can just blast it from inside the plane."

"That's also the sort of thing you should tell me in advance," Kaji said. "Okay. I'm about to go into a dive. We're at ten thousand feet. Three kilometres," he quickly added, correctly predicting Chitose's response. "We'll have about … five seconds before I need to pull up. They probably can't insert that fast. Afterwards, I'll climb, and you can parachute out. Can you hit it?"

"I'm pretty sure I've hit things about that size and relative speed in the Pribnow Box," she said. "Sometimes."

"I want you to take a moment to think about how terrible those will be as last words," he said, and pitched the Zig's nose downward and hit the afterburners.

G-forces pressed them both against their seats, as the plane went into a dive. The ground approached them at almost twice the speed of sound. Chitose splayed her fingers; orange light crackled and coalesced around her hand. At the last moment, Kaji killed the afterburners and pulled the pitch up. The plane passed thirty metres from the Eva; Chitose made a motion like throwing a softball.

An octagonal pyramid of pure light flashed between her palm and the plug, blasting open the plane's fuselage. It didn't destroy the armoured plug, but did warp it enough to stop it from inserting. Kaji swore and yanked at the pitch as the plane yawed and rolled: the hole in the fuselage created a Bernouilli pressure difference that sucked air out of the cabin and threw the little Zig's aerodynamics into chaos.

"You idiot! You complete _idiot!_"

Chitose waggled her fingers, and her parachute shot up and into her lap. Kaji pulled the plane up into a climb; she waited until they were at five hundred metres, then ejected, held the parachute in her arms, and pulled the cord. She dangled from it, spinning completely out of control, for two minutes, before hitting the ground and losing her balance; it fell on top of her, and she threw up.

"Hey! Freeze! Don't move!"

She stayed that way, on all fours under the material of the parachute, waiting for her inner ear to stabilise and spitting, while the man approached. He had spoken German.

"Alright. Crawl slowly backward out from under there. I'm armed."

She obeyed, and once she was out from under the parachute, slowly rose to her feet.

"Put your hands up and turn around."

She did so. There were in fact two men, obviously private security guards, both holding submachine guns on her, quite understandably given the dented Eva and the fighter jet corkscrewing a kilometre overhead.

"Hi," she said, "do either of you have any water? I need to rinse my mouth out."

One of the men glanced down at his belt; a canister dangled off it, along with a walkie-talkie, telescoping baton, and spare ammo. The other didn't, and the first didn't move to retrieve his. "Say, you look like those girls the Boss keeps around. Who are you, their big sister?"

"Older twin, I think, genetically," said Chitose, and snapped both of their necks. She motioned, and a gun and the canteen floated over to her; she unstopped the latter, swigged, and spat. She tucked the gun under her arm. Clearly she was in the right place. She considered just using her capacitance attack, but she had to be sure; he might not even be inside, and if she blew it up, she'd never find the body, and would never know whether he was really dead or just in hiding. Instead, she set off for the manor.

There were marble steps, leading up to a porch and a hand-carved oaken door. The grandiosity of it irritated her; it was exactly the sort of thing the old men always did, that had let them convince themselves that they could do whatever they wanted to her and whomever else. She smashed it to bits with a thought.

Inside was a greeting-room, with two stairwells and six paintings that each cost more than Rei's apartment building; it was all covered in plush red carpet that had been immaculate until she had sprayed it with bits of door. A uniformed doorman was wide-eyed in shock, covered in dust.

"Good afternoon," she said, smiling. "Do you know if Lorenz Kihl is here?"

The man pointed at a double door.

"Thank you," she said. She raised a hand, then reconsidered and lowered it again. "Run."

Either because of the exploded door, because he recognised her the same way the guard had, or because she was holding a submachine gun, he obeyed. She pushed through the ornate double doors and into a long hallway, full of more priceless art and studded by doors to either side. She blasted them open as she passed; Lorenz Kihl was behind the eighth.

It was a dining room. There was a long table in its middle, with space for eighty but set for one. Kihl sat in an electric wheelchair at the far end, half a bowl of soup before him.

"Tamiel," he said. "I've been assured three times that you've died in the past day. You really do know how to disappoint me, don't you?"

"What," she said, her voice slowing and clearing, "because I decided not to do exactly what you and the other old men wanted?"

"A child should obey her parents."

"You're not my father."

"Your biological father is a member of my organisation, and gave me _in loco parentis_."

"I don't care."

"We gave you life."

"It's not really a gift if you don't let me do what I want with it."

"Foolish girl. Do you expect to be given things in this world with no strings attached? We made you into a God, and you threw it all away because you were too selfish to follow the Scenario."

"Do you expect me to put up with it if you attach strings to everything you give me? You hardly asked my permission."

"I expected you to show some gratitude for what you have, as you should."

"You really like saying that the world _should_ be a certain way which happens to work out really well for you, but not so well for me. Or everyone who died in Second Impact. Or everyone who didn't."

Kihl laughed; a dry wheeze, accompanied by the rattle of old bionics. "Don't act like you care, child. You're every bit selfish enough to end the world for your own ends."

"No, I'm not. I don't want this world destroyed. Unlike you, I've been doing everything I could to protect it. I fought the Angels as well as I could. If I'd had the MP Evas, I would have given them to Nerv months ago."

"Exactly. Foolish, short-sighted girl. And then Ikari would rule the world. Your interference would have plunged us all into eternal darkness."

"You wouldn't have been any better," she said. "You're an insane cyborg who hasn't been young in far too long. And you're trying to become an Angel, too."

"Like you, you mean?"

"You made me this way."

"Well, at least you're right about one thing. This body has been old for far, far too long." He lifted a hand, to demonstrate the whir of an actuator. "You presume to tell me who ought to rule the world? So arrogant, like all young people. Will you tell me that because I'm old, I should be condemned to death? Without the S2 organ, my body will fail within the year."

"What? If you just wanted to live forever, you could have taken all the money you gave to Nerv and the Katsuragi Expedition and put it into anti-senescence research that could be given to everyone. You want it for yourself. You just want to rule."

"The world needs a strong hand," he said. "And he needs power, to keep rebellious children like yourself in line."

After meeting Kensuke, she had read about twentieth-century wars in detail. One event that had resonated with her was during the Vietnam War, when the Western nations had tried to conscript their young men into fighting a war they didn't believe in, and the young men had refused. Not all, but some, enough to matter.

"You can't have that power," she said, "because children like myself need to rebel."

"That you think that only proves me right. Do you really think that with fifteen years and a handful of books, you know this world better than someone who has lived in it for most of a century? Foolish girl."

"Are you trying to make me angry?" she asked. Her inquisitive, argumentative nature had stopped her from realising before, but he was only barely paying attention to their debate.

He laughed again. "No, child, I was trying to stall." He waved around, showing that four people had quietly entered the room, in the corners beside her, outside her peripheral vision, and another had snuck up behind: five Kaworim.

"Tamiel," they monotoned in perfect unison.

She snapped her gun up at Kihl; he didn't flinch. "Go ahead," he said. "They're reprogrammed to protect me from any threat. You can't overwhelm all of them at once."

"I think you're lying," she said. "I think that these ones are duds, that they can't project AT Fields at all. Because if they could, I wouldn't still be talking to you like this."

"One of the first things we found upon lobotomising them was that their AT Fields became inactive except while raised," he said. "It helps in controlling them and keeping them from killing each other; that was annoying. It would have been a terrible bluff because you're going to fight now either way, and a stupid tactic: why would I use failures rather than successes as guards? But feel free to test it. Take your best shot at me."

Chitose hesitated. He was right.

"And even if you do succeed, your fiancé will still die. The clones have a dead man's switch hard-coded in. If anyone kills me, they will wipe out that person's entire organisation. You and Tabris are both considered part of Nerv, and there are sixty-nine clones with twenty-three Evas in Tokyo-3 at this very moment. Assuming, of course, that they haven't killed him already."

Her face went blank for a while, then broke out into a true smile.

"So he made the choice," she said, and pivoted and fired. The one clone behind her was isolated, and the walls blocked it from the others' line of sight; they could do nothing as she gunned it down and bounded toward it, taking her out of their line of sight as they raised their AT Fields.

"_Kill her!_"

She ran ten metres down the hallway before the nearer clones blasted through it; her mind went, and she lunged at them, firing point-blank. She got through another's Field, riddling the child behind with bullets, before the other three swarmed her. Two neutralised her Field; the third belted her in the face with a full blast, knocking her off her feet and the gun from her hand. The other two knelt on her arms. They were half her age and much smaller than her, but she'd got used to using her Field as a crutch, and couldn't budge them, no matter how hard she thrashed. The third walked over.

"Disappointing," said Kihl, and then a gun fired and blew his head apart.

Tamiel was too far gone with Absolute Terror, but the three clones all swivelled their heads and saw Kaji, still wearing his flight jacket, holding a smoking pistol.

"Kaji Ryoji," they said in unison. One touched an earpiece and added, "Seele must be destroyed."

"It's not what it looks like," he said.

The three clones raised their hands to denature him; Chitose motioned, her gun flew back into her hands, and she gunned them all down.

Kaji looked around, over the five dead children, Lorenz Kihl, and Chitose.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"I … yes." She pushed herself to her feet, then checked her gun and discarded the empty magazine.

"Right. Then, please, promise me that that's the last time you blow a hole in a plane while I'm flying it. I only just got it under control long enough to get high enough to eject and parachute."

"I didn't realise the hole would stop it from flying. I mean, it wasn't on the front of the plane. I've never read about aerodynamics."

Kaji opened his mouth, then decided to just leave it. "Are we done, then?" he asked.

"Almost. Somewhere in this building are the materials for installing an S2 organ into a human being. If a smart scientist found them, they could clone it, and someone else would use it. Not everyone can have one, because of Absolute Terror, and if anyone does, they'll try and take over the world with it, or create some sort of caste-based society or something even worse. We can't let that happen. I have to destroy all of the data and raw materials. That includes the clones, so you have to promise me you'll get Katsuragi or someone to kill them and incinerate the bodies. "

"That would also include you. Any of your sweat, hair, let alone if you ever had children …"

"Cloning doesn't work like that. You can't just take some molecules of DNA and somehow make a person out of them. You need full, live cells for nuclear transfer. Don't worry about me, though, worry about yourself."

"On that topic, there are guards coming."

"So run. Fast. In fact, if you can find a vehicle, that would probably be better. Without an Eva to help me charge, you should have about fifteen minutes. Good luck with Major Katsuragi, Kaji Ryoji. Let everyone from Nerv know that I'm sorry for everything I did wrong, I'm happy for everything that went right, and that being with them was the best experience of my life. I wish it didn't have to be this way. Tell Shinji he doesn't need to worry about getting revenge for his father. This is the last time any of you are ever going to see me. Goodbye."

"I see. It has been an … experience knowing you, Mogami Chitose. Goodbye." They shook hands, and he turned and left.

It took him three minutes to find and hotwire a car, giving him twelve minutes to peel out of the estate as fast as it would go, putting him fifteen kilometres from her and five past the lethal range of the shockwave. A giant cross of light rose over Kihl's estate.

"Yeah," he murmured, "I'll be sure to tell him that. You never were any good at lying, were you?"

…

Nine thousand kilometres away, the sixteen MP Evas all straightened, as though listening to a distant sound, and turned and ran. Four headed east; when they reached the sea, they began swimming toward America. The other twelve headed west, in three groups with slightly different bearings; someone very astute who traced their geodesic paths might possibly have put their destinations as somewhere in Russia, France, and Britain.

General Hyakutake watched them from his vantage point in the UNTMF field hospital. "Where are you going?!" he shouted into a telephone. "I order you to go down there and finish them off! Now! Get back here!"

The Evas paid him no mind, and soon were gone. Major-General Reichner repressed a smirk.

"Fine. We still have the conventional forces to finish Nerv off, once and for all."

There was a click, as Reichner cocked his gun and held it to Hyakutake's head.

"So we do. But the order for that isn't going to go through," said Reichner.

"What. Do you think. You are doing."

"Something I should have done before you sent in the first wave, _sir_. I hereby place you under arrest for violation of the accords of war, to wit: abduction and conspiracy to murder a fifteen-year-old girl, use of chemical weapons and incendiaries in a populated area, executing civilians, refusing surrenders, use of child soldiers, and, oh, endangering the continued existence of the human race, I'm sure there's a by-law against that. I'll let you know if I think of any more."

"You cannot be serious," said Hyakutake, staring him down, but Reichner held his gaze.

"You made two mistakes, sir. You confused my disagreements with Nerv for hatred. I know that men died during their operations; that's what happens during a war. I fought with them every step of the way, because they were careless and they could have done better, but they're only human, doing the best they could. They tried to save us all, and, most of the time, they _succeed__ed_. That has to count for something.

"And second? You didn't have to fight like you did. You could've sent in those Evas as a first wave. You didn't, and that needlessly got my men killed." His façade of deference vanished; he narrowed his eyes to slits. "An officer's first duty is to his men, and I take my duty seriously. I should shoot you where you stand, you festering piece of scum."

They exchanged glares of pure hatred.

"But, unlike you, I am a real soldier and a real man, and I know how to uphold the honour of my uniform. Mizrahi!"

His second-in-command walked in. "Sir?"

"Take this man into custody." Mizrahi's eyes glinted. "Then, order our men to form a cordon around the Geofront, facing outward. If those scumbags send anyone else to attack Nerv, they're going to have to come through us. Nerv protected us from the Angels; now we're going to protect them from these lunatics. Send some engineering crews down there with white flags, to help any survivors."

"Yes, sir." Mizrahi took Hyakutake's gun from its holster.

"I'll see you court-martialled for this," Hyakutake said.

"I didn't tell you to stop," Reichner told Mizrahi. The colonel nodded and prodded the general out of the tent. Reichner let out a heave of air and fell back onto his bed.

…

As the last of what was left of her mind unravelled, Yui smiled down at her son. She hadn't been able to build a better world for him, but he'd managed to do it himself. He'd do just fine. Her work was finally finished. Her core finally disintegrated, and Unit-01 was no more.

…

_AN: The Angels' names are all derived from actual theology. I got them from Wikipedia's list; this also served as inspiration for most of their powers._

_Raguel: the Angel of Revenge. Pretty obvious: I gave him an attack that can only be used in retaliation._

_Lailah: the Angel of the Unborn; her name also means 'night', and the only angel with feminine characteristics (-ah suffix rather than -iel). Originally she was just going to be a clam which released ink as an obscuring tactic, but the birthing theme made for a much more interesting enemy. I decided this quite late on, and had to go back and insert the fights against her sons, kind of jarringly, into the earlier chapters._

_Zadkiel: the Angel of Mercy. Notably, the only one which doesn't even try to hurt anyone, using disabling goop on Asuka and Shinji and merely shoving Chitose away._

_Muriel: the Angel of the Zodiac sign of Cancer. He sounds an awful lot like a giant enemy crab, with two extra legs co-opted as claws and with a gratuitous energy cannon._

_Ophan Akzar: the Cruel Wheel of God. This was a tough one to name. I'd had the idea for a rotary artillery attack like an ancient slinger from a sci-fi novel I abandoned awhile ago, and thought it could work here, with a few modifications. However, there was no obvious angel name. I considered one of the angels of fire, but eventually found out about the Ophanim, the angels who served as the wheels of God's chariot. Unfortunately, Wikipedia didn't list any by name – not even Ophaniel is said to be an Ophan, go figure – so I had to break the naming convention. Oh well._

_Kerubiel: the Flames which Dance around the Throne of God. His description was lifted basically verbatim from Wikipedia. Except that I don't think the original could shoot lasers, and might have been a bit taller. A lot of the traditional angels are ludicrously tall, as in measured in AU._

_Azrael: the Angel of Destruction. His description was also lifted from Wikipedia, where he is stated to have four faces, and to have one tongue for every person still alive. At the time, the surviving Angels were himself, Lailah, Ambriel, and Lucifer._

_Ambriel: the Angel of the Zodiac Sign of Gemini. This was originally based on Ditto – Pokémon is a great source for inspiration/plagiarism – and was going to be Asuka, and try an elaborate 'no, I'm the real Asuka' game, and copy other people's shapes too. Eventually I decided this was dumb, and a much smarter strategy would be to blitz in under the security, kill the Nephilim who were the only plausible threats, and then race to the Seeds before the other pilots arrived._

_Lucifer: the Light-Bringer. The idea of a continually exploding atom bomb was about the most powerful weapon I could think of that wasn't literally unbeatable. Originally he was called Michael, the chief of God's army, because Lucifer is a pretty pretentious name; but I had to admit that The Light-Bringer fits his powers like a glove._

_Tamiel: the Angel of Perfection. Originally, all I wanted was a second Naphil, who would rebel against Seele, and shake the cast up to justify character developments different from canon; I hadn't decided anything about her personality. She had to be a girl, for the thematic contrast with the all-male Seele, and so I looked through the list of rebel angels for one with what could be a mellifluous girl's name. (I considered having her be called Lailah, the only traditionally feminine angel, but the name was taken and Lailah wasn't a rebel; rebellion is more important to her character than her gender.) Tamiel sounds nice; nicer than Kokabiel or Armaros, anyway. I chose to run with it._

_Tamiel was the lord of the deep, and he taught humans how to perform abortions and about snakebites. Those were referenced, but the main character inspiration was that when Tamiel fell to Earth, he taught humans about astronomy, in contrast to his peers Kokabiel and Baraqiel, who taught astrology; I took this as meaning Chitose would be a personification of science. This dovetailed neatly with wanting contrasts with the mystical Seele. Her entire personality is based upon this idea. I deliberately chose to make her double-edged, partly because she'd be really boring if she were a super-powered purely good heroine, and partly because scientists gave us both penicillin and the A-bomb._

_There's a lot of subtext to her dialogue, especially with Kaworu. If you didn't pick early on that she was like him, you may want to reread the earlier chapters. Bear in mind that as heavy as I am on exposition, there are a few lies and other loose ends left dangling. I was going to clear them up with an epilogue, but then I remembered Harry Potter._

_The story honestly wasn't named for her. Everyone rebels against other people's expectations; she's only the most obvious case, and in one sense the least interesting, because she begins that way, rather than developing. Rei rejected Gendo's Instrumentality; Asuka refused to pilot, until she understood that it was on her own terms, not merely the terms of her five-year-old self; Shinji showed that he piloted to protect the ones he loved, that his father's wishes were ultimately irrelevant; and Kaworu defied Seele outright._


End file.
